There is far more in this film I could explain, but I am probably casting pearls before swine.
No, you're just being a fucking asshat.
Yes, I'm quite aware of the elemental themes in "The Way Things Go". It's sort of hard to miss the way they kept burning things, using water, balloons, etc. No. Fucking. Shit.
Again, my original comment stands. These concepts are not new, and claiming the Honda ad was a direct copy of "The Way Things Go" is self-indulgent ego-stroking. You're caught-up in the idea that you are an intellectual superior because you can see THE ART in a film made by a couple of Germans in a warehouse as an execuse to sponge money off the NEA and other organizations.
This doesn't make their creation any less fascinating or entertaining. It is, however, no more original than Honda's ad. Dumbass.
As for the Cog ad being a rip-off of that film, while the grandparent post is idiotic. The Cog ad was very clearly an homage to Rube Goldberg devices, the likes of which have been shown in movies, TV shows and cartoons for well over fifty years. "The Way Things Go" isn't really innovative with the basic concept, it's just a nify piece done for the sake of doing it... And a nice demonstration of science in the process.
After the guy calls the cops, the police can go chasing after your car in a low-speed highway chase, pull you over, handcuff you, and strip search you and your car to a) look for whatever you stole, and b) as a deterrent to *wasting their fucking time*. And I guarantee you that in just about any court in this country, setting off the "inventory management" alert is probable cause to assume shoplifting is taking place, so don't go talking about violations of your 4th Amendment rights.
You are fucking moron. Or a cunting troll.
a) Cops can not legally just pull you over, handcuff you and perform invasive searches because of an "inventory management" incident. For that matter, no pig is stupid enough to waste that much effort on such an absolutely trivial crime.
b) Given such an absurd scenario as you postulate, cops would be far more likely to arrest whoever called them to report a non-existant crime.
c) I'm taking you up on your guarantee. Provide me absolute proof to your claim that any court in this country would consider a mere sensormatic alarm system in a grocery store going off to be probable cause of shoplifting..
I've personally had these fucking useless hatstands go off on me on so many occasions I can't count. Always because the cashier hadn't demagnetized the merchandise, or there was too long a delay in the line, or the phase of the moon wasn't in the right astronomical house. In EVERY. SINGLE. CASE. I was just waved on. No one ever demanded to see my receipt, verify my purchases, inspect my person or accused me of shoplifting.
Exactly one time I've seen one of these store alarm systems go off where it was someone actually shoplifting. The other uncountable events were as happened to me... Inept technology uselessly bleating about non-existant situations.
The plain fact of these "inventory control" alarms is they are to make employees and managers aware of possible loss. They do not impart magical new legal powers or functions to Joe Blow people. No one is ever under any legal requirement to stop just because one of the damned things go off. Even if an actual police officer is there. An actual eye-witness must be available, or you have to exhibit additional behavior such as bolting out the door, screaming "I didn't take nothing!", physically assaulting someone, etc. Just saying "Nope, your machine has no authority or validity over me" and continuing on your way as a lawful citizen is just that... Lawful.
I very much doubt that is true as the whole point of women's shelters is normally that they are confidential.
Indeed. I work for a telco and we had a women's shelter as a customer at one point. Special arrangements were made so that the shelter's number would be unlisted, that the physical address of the shelter not be directly associated with the account, and that the domain registration be done entirely in our company's name.
This is typical, as a woman's shelter (which frequently also shelter's children) is literally trying to save people's lives. There's a lot of twisted fucks who think nothing of beating their own spouses, even their own babies until they are crippled or dead.
This story ignites a great deal of rage in me. Children are the, and I mean THE most critical resource to humanity. Air, water, food, those are just things we need to survive long enough to have children and raise them to adults. Each new generation is what provides continuinty of our species, as well as our culture.
Because of Mark Dennis, hundreds of children already living lives of questionable quality have had those lives put at greater risk. What a pathetic loser.
What total asshats. Not only are they asshats for developing this "technology" and violating consumers with it, they are lying scumbags. Every word on their webpage is a bald-faced lie.
Check this JavaScript sample (raw-source view) to see how they check for not only Shockwave Flash but Windows Media player, QuickTime and some video-related plugin ("ntsc").
Looks like the only surefire way to block them is to add unicast.com entries to your local hosts file and/or proxy servers.
Are you fucking insane?! $400 for a lifetime subscription? No. How about $200? And $300 for a unit? Uh, how about $150? You just got to make the purchases at the right time.
Hell, go buy a used one on eBay, with lifetime service included.
isn't TiVo just a niche product that really should only be used by folks with an antenna feed or analog cable feed who don't have the savvy to set up a PC next to their TV?
If you call a market of tens of millions of people a "niche", then yes.
Isn't its current success due largely to clever marketing and a small window of market opportunity that they've now artificially prolonged?
False. Tivo in fact has relied heavily on word-of-mouth to gain customers. Early adopters who became "Tivofanatics" would rave about Tivo to friends/family, who would look into it themselves. I myself have converted a co-worker and am slowly convincing my mother-in-law to get one (considering how little TV she watches, that's impressive).
(I'm confused as to how Tivo can be said to have artificially prolonged the market. They haven't done anything to stop other companies from making PVRs. Maybe I misunderstand that part of your statement).
Tivo pretty much created the PVR market. The "TV On Demand" service that various cable companies are offering are the copy-cats. Fact is, the PVR itself isn't a particularly amazing technological device. What Tivo did was to make sure the PVR has a very smooth, polished interface, that everything was as easy to use as possible, and that there were features beyond just rewind/fastforward/pause live TV.
Also, the "On Demand" services are only available in some cable markets, generally only for those with digital cable. You have to pay extra for the service. And it still doesn't include ratings, suggestions (based on collaborative ratings), Home Media Option, automagic recording of programs based on keywords/acters/titles... It's really just the RW/FF/Pause stuff.
That is, I think there was an argument for TiVo back when it was introduced, but isn't that argument substantially weaker today?
Not in my opinion. The PVR technology itself is NOT what Tivo sells, and never has been. Tivo's been about the software and the services behind it. Most PVR alternatives only give you the minimal range of features a Tivo-enabled PVR can offer. MythTV is pretty promising, but ultimately it's backed by nothing substantial. It'll be great for hobbyists and wonderful if Tivo ever does one day falter... But at this time Tivo's market share is growing and their popularity is definitely increasing.
Here's a few more points about Tivo:
A stand-alone Tivo unit works with any sort of TV input you want. RF antenna, analog cable (with our without cable box), digital cable, satellite, etc. You can even record shows from videotape/DVD/camcorders onto Tivo if you are so inclined (albeit in a kludgey fashion)
Because of the above, Tivo keeps being useful even if you're TV service changes! I can drop cable completely, switch to satellite or move to another part of the country and my Tivo Series 2 will continue to provide me the same level of features and services.
For those with DirecTV you can buy a Tivo-enabled DirecTV unit, and get all the benefit of Tivo along with perfect recording quality of DirecTV programming. In fact, DirecTivo is a big reason for Tivo's success, IMO.
Yes, I own a Tivo Series 2. No, I do not own stock in Tivo nor do I work for the company.
Translation for the Technically Challenged(MBA): Liquidate TIVO from your portfolio.
"Yes, well, that's the sort of blinkard, Philistine pig-ignorance I've come to
expect from you non-creative garbage."
Informative? What the frell is informative about this message? Jeez...
Guess what folks: We're geeks. We LIKE to do things our selves. We love to play with computers and scripts and Linux and hardware and ad nauseum. Beeing a geek means "doing it yourself", even for the sort of things our society doesn't think of as DIY.
The other 5 billion people on this planet DO NOT. For every Tivo subscriber who's a hardcore geek, there's going to be a dozen who don't give a shit. They just want it to work. They DO NOT even remotely have the skills or experience needed, and they actually like everything to be in one compact little box.
This sort of pathetic one-eyed, unidirectional mindset is why geeks, no matter how smart, can hardly ever make a real commercial success for themselves. Geeks just can't seem to comprehend the market...
TiVo is a service company! They sell a SERVICE! Hell, they only started selling their own equipment a couple of years ago. The vast majority of Tivo devices are actually manufactured and sold by companies other than Tivo.
So yes, it makes perfect sense that Tivo is looking for new ways to expand their service offering.
But you're a geek.
Joe Sixpack could give a fuck about you and your whining on DRM. Joe Sixpack probably doesn't own a PC, or it's some stock Gateway/Dell/Packard Bell with Joe Average specs.
Joe Sixpack really likes being able to have the Tivo record stuff for him without his having to keep track of when a show's on. Joe Sixpack loves being able to skip commercials. And Joe Sixpack likes instant replaying the shots of those girls bouncing up and down on 'THe Man Show'.
"Catching up" to MythTV is an amusing idea. TiVo is a pioneer in PVR tech. THey are WAY more serious about this than a bunch of geeks like us. They want to make money. Lots of it. Finding a way to make it easy for people to violate copyrights by trading TV shows/movies on the Internet is highly incompatible with that goal.
Frankly, I'm most interested in the Tivo/DVD burner combo units. The ability to transfer a Tivo show to my PC is only marginally interesting to me... Of course at some point someone will figure out a way to crack that, and Tivo will either start getting sued..... Or start suing.:(
My company (1,200+ employee telecom) uses some Linux for various ISP services as well as internal odds-and-ends. No one in management has said a peep to me about getting rid of Linux because of the SCO claims.
As far as I know we haven't received any legal letters, though I'm not sure if I'd hear about it immediately if we did. Doesn't seem likely we would though because the majority of visible servers are, sadly, Winblows...
Actually, one of our IT directors likes Linux now, because it's so cheap. While he isn't in favor of it as our primary computing platform, he's mentioned it as a possible thin-client solution for sales.
What, are you a retard? You think it's whining when some total unknown entity costs your corporation $150,000 a year just for anti-spam software and hardware to run on it?
It may not be the end all be all solution, but obviously we haven't found that yet. This seems like a pretty good solution for the moment.
No. It sucks. And it's not a solution. A solution is something that completely solves an issue. This wouldn't solve the issue.
Why not? Because the issue isn't "How do I filter spam?" THe issue is "How do I stop spam from being created in the first place?"
There may be a better one that comes out, making this one null and void, but we are continuing to find ideas which are a little better than the last.
This is actually one of the stupidest ideas I've heard in a while. Let's see...
a) Doesn't stop spammers from sending e-mail in the first place
b) Naive idea that "[...] a computational "price" of a 10-second levy would mean spammers would only be able to send about 8,000 messages a day, at most".[1]
c) Ends up delaying delivery of legitimate e-mail!
d) Useless unless supported by both e-mail clients and MTA's.
e) Will add yet more complexity, cost, administration, explanation and general headaches to an e-mail system that used to be frelling useful.
How can that be a bad thing?
See above. Also, it wastes valuable time and resources to pursue the idea...
Remember, Spam is a social problem. Spammers are, by nature, criminals. Not just because spamming is illegal in many states, not just because spammers will literally break-into computer systems just to launch campaigns, but also because frequently the content of the spam itself is illegal.
Frankly, as with any crime, it's not likely it will ever go away. The best we can do is make it less profitable for the spammers. To accomplish that, we need to punish those who encourage spam, at the least socially.
If you know someone who's ever responded to an obvious spam, rail them for it! Publically humiliate them and explain how incredibly stupid and thoughtless they are. Shun them. Mock them. And most importantly, educate them.
[1] Does Mr. Wobbler really think a spammer is just one guy on one PC sending e-mail out all by his lonesome? What good does this sytem do when spammers launch massive parallel sessions, using not only multiple dedicated T-1 lines but literally hundreds upon hundreds of open relays and proxies? What the hell sort of name is "Mr. Wobbler"?!!!
This has got to be one of the stupidest and most insane ideas I've ever heard.
It's bad enough that any child molesting pervert can enjoy near-total anonymity thanks to war-driving or simply visiting a McCafe sponsorted hot-spot... Now spammers and other Internet scumbags will enjoy total freedom of momement as they slowly pillage what usefulness there is left in the Internet...
Another, very interesting feature is NSV streaming video.
Like the 'internet radio' stations streamed by shoutcast, there are a few internet TV stations. This my friends, is truely significant. Winamp becomes a digital-tv tuner (....i dont mean HDTV). People will be able to stream out any video they'd like -- the other day I watched a few episodes of aqua teen hunger force, some pr0n, and the movie Phone Booth.
In other words, all copyright infringing material.
It's funny how there's such a strong movement for alternative music (i.e. not mainstream, corporate music but independent label stuff), but there's no such thing yet for video.
It appears to be happening though. Ordinary people can afford the tools to make their own mini-movies, TV shows, etc. The internet makes it possible to share/broadcast these creations. Which means the MPAA and other visual-media organizations and companies will start to lash-out not just at copyright infringements but at the technology itself.
Wasn't the Nullsoft folks always promising that Winamp would be FREE and AD-FREE?
Yes. And it is. No ad-ware or spyware of any sort. No banners. No hidden fees. Even the anonymous statistics gatherer can be turned off and is clearly displayed.
Then all of a sudden the 'put AOL icons on your desktop' bit was included, and now they want money for the full version of Winamp?
Well Nullsoft is owned by AOL now, just like Netscape. I don't see how that can be counted as advertising. Note that you actually are explicitly told it will install the icon and you have the option to not add the icon. Guess what the icon is? Just a URL to AOL's website. That's it.
A far, far cry from something like BonzoBuddy or Gator. Note that there is huge difference between ad-free and sponsor-free. Hell, not even Slashdot is sponsor free.
No thanks, Nullsoft.
This wasn't such an unreasonable post except for this line. It's a really tired backhand, at least try something clever...
Winamp was Shareware for a time. It's never been free as in speech, to this date Nullsoft has not released the source to Winamp itself.
However, Winamp has pretty much always been free as in beer. Even when they had registration, there was a distinction between the Lite version and the Pro version. At one point I think they were even planning to do "adware" though I'm not sure if a release with that was ever done.
Over here is a complete archive of Winamp releases, except the none of the frelling links work. But you can see the release history at least. At a certain point, Nullsoft was bought by AOL and thus didn't need to do the shareware/registration thing anymore.
As for Open Source, Nullsoft has released a lot of OpenSource stuff, pretty much all for Windows. The most useful being their installer program, I've seen a lot of freeware packages use NSIS. Here's all the programs Nullsoft has released recently. I've always liked Nullsoft's naming approach...
(Historical note: One of the most popular plugins for Winamp has been Geiss, developed by Mr. Ryan Geiss. He originally wrote it independently. Then he got a job with Creative Labs working on Oozic, Creative's own idea for a media player with nifty visuals. Oozic started life as Lava but had to change names, probably for trademark reasons. Sadly, Creative Tech turned asswipe with Oozic, declaring it only available for those who bought their hardware and had it on the driver CD. Anyways, Mr. Geiss left Creative to go work for Nullsoft! Where he developed some more nifty visualization tools such as Milkdrop and Geiss II.)
(BONUS Historical note: Before Winamp, before multi-media players with visualization plugins, there was Cthugha by Kevin "Zaph" Burfitt. Cthugha started life as a DOS freeware program that did pretty VGA animations in synch with music from an audio CD. Eventually a version was developed for Windows 95, and 3D support was even added providing you used a 3DFX card. Sadly the project has languished for years now but not before Kevin released source and a number of folks ported Cthugha to MacOS, Linux, Java and yes, even a Winamp plugin!)
As cited in the article she's doing it to make a living, not to make big bucks - completely understandable in her situation (and for everybody who's been in a similar situation). Heck, I wouldn't complain once if I could "do some good" deleting my daily dose of spam.
The article sites she makes anywhere from $2,000 to $7,000 in a week. Since she's self-employed and most likely cheating on her taxes, that's pretty much net. Let's say she makes only $5k a month all-said. That's $60k a year net, WAAAAAAAAY more than anyone needs to live in a relatively comfortable fashion. As for her situation, it isn't really clear that she's not capable of working normally. She has bad headaches? So do a lot of other folks, it doesn't stop them from working in an office. A good friend of mine sells insurance and often suffers from cluster migraines.
In reality, what's happening is they are probably squandering large amounts of money on church tithes, "charity" and the like. Oh, and however much she spends on computer equipment, bandwidth, etc... We don't have access to their finances so there's no way to really know.
The idea that the spamming is OK because it's for a "good cause" is reprehensible. Is it ok if I shoot you in the head? I think it's for a good cause. No IT'S NOT OK!!! The ends do not justify the means. There's an unlimited number of ways one can do chairity and good in the world without simultaneously doing bad.
If you apply the same reasoning to people sharing files you're making a very strong case for the copyright holders
And what the fuck does that have to do with the rest of the entire topic? Dumbass.
My first thought on seeing this was that Yahoo! was somehow going to be relying on DNSSEC to accomplish this task. Sounds like they are:
Under Yahoo's new architecture, a system sending an e-mail message would embed a secure, private key in a message header. The receiving system would check the Internet's Domain Name System for the public key registered to the sending domain.
On one hand I like the idea as it would make it rather difficult for spammers to get through. Domain name forging in e-mail would be dramatically less effective. E-mail through open relays would be more clearly identifiable as such.
On the other hand, this significantly increases the resources needed to deliver and receive e-mail. Not only is more processing time needed, but significantly more bandwidth as well. Every single e-mail message, including NDR's and warning messages, would have an extra hundred bytes (guesstimate) for the key in the header. Plus the MTA's would need to do additional DNS queries in order to look-up the keys.
Sure it's a pretty small increase in resources on an individual scale. But when an ISP is processing 100,000 messages a day it adds up. Overall it means more e-mail would be delayed.
One could hope that the trade-off in extra bandwidth and CPU resources would balance out with significantly less spam. But Spammers have already shown their willingness to do anything illegal to get what they want. Breaking into servers to steal private keys would certainly not be above the ethics of spammer, nor beyond their technical abilities. Sure they may not be able to break into Yahoo's server, but Joe Sixpacks home-business server?
Here's the other big gotcha with this scheme... Assuming this is done at the level of the domain names and not just the MTAs, we could see a situation arise where users wouldn't be able to send e-mail out except with the domain name of their ISP provider. Right now I use RoadRunner's SMTP server to send all my e-mail but I'm not using my RR e-mailboxes (except to collect spam). Of course this is why spam is so easy to do in the first place... the SMTP server doesn't attempt to validate my username OR domain name.
Maybe the aim for "Domain Keys" is to allow the MTAs to verify each other's identities and won't rely strictly on the domain name. But would it hurt Yahoo! or AOL if users of their networks were locked-in to using just their e-mail addresses?
I used to play with a DOS shareware program waaaay back around 1991 which did pretty much the same thing as the poetry generator. Only it wasn't limited to poetry.
You just fed sample text pieces to the program to analyze and let it generate text. You had several "channels" and could adjust the mixture of these channels. You also had various "effects" that could be added, such as Dyslexia, Lisp, Canadian, Pig Latin, etc... And those could also be mixed.
As far as I can tell, the poetry program uses the same essential techniques of text analyzing and re-mixing, just more dedicated to a specific output.
You didn't offend me, though I was a bit irritated by the air of your message. I was trying to point out some folks don't celebrate Christmas and could be offended by the implication that they weren't good if they did. I'm pretty sure that wasn't your intent...
My response could be considered aimed at the thread in general and not just your message.
Come on people, there's SIX BILLION humans on this planet. Quit thinking your religion and customs are the only ones that count.
It's admirable to give the poor a special Christmas, but then comes the quandries. Why didn't you do it during some other time of year? Why only do it during the (incorrect) birthday of Jesus? How poor is poor? Aren't you doing it because you're afraid of going to Hell, or selfishly trying to guarantee a way for yourself into Heaven?
There's a disturbing atmosphere of "one-upmanship" around all this charity bragging. Just do whatever you feel like for Christmas and stop bitching that other people don't follow your lead.
P.S.
This isn't flamebait. My father's an ordained Episcopal minister.
Re:Disk Swap by snailmail.
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· Score: 2, Informative
The context was in that of the US Postal System (Hint: The article is about US Postal history).
In the USPS, if a letter is mis-addressed but has a correct return address it will be returned to the sender at no cost, delivered right to their mailbox.
Re:Snail Mail Bombs - Not that bad.
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Snail Mail Tech
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· Score: 1
It led to the establishment of regular security guards, an electronic badge entry system, and relocation of the mailroom. Note that this was not an internally delivered package but a mail sent through regular postal mail. And the USPS did not detect it.
Nor did they detect a second package sent by the same perp, though they did mis-deliver it to the mall across the street.
So this poor bastard gets arrested and the spammers get away scott-free. Why?
Because there are clear and established laws about making threats of a physical nature against people. The perp here was actually threatening individual persons with bodily harm. Law enforcement is obligated to assume the threats are serious and not jokes.
So one can't blame law enforcement for arresting and charging the guy.
But why are the spammers not being scrutinized for their behavior? While they weren't threatening the man with physical violence or bodily harm, they were very clearly harassing him.
As has been pointed out, activity like that from an individual person (sexually explicit/suggestive materials forcibly delivered to your mailbox) would be considered illegal as well, at the very least a misdemeanor.
Unfortunately it has become all too common for human society to accept behavior from businesses and corporations that would never be acceptable from individuals. Why have so many companies been able to get away with designing, printing and distributing blatantly racist and discriminatory T-shirts (Target's "88" fiasco, the "Wong Bros Laundry" fiasco) and then pretending it was all a mistake? For that matter, how come we get television ads that are blatantly racist/discriminatory? TV ads aren't made up in a matter of minutes. It takes months to write, produce, edit, review, etc...
It's because people just automatically don't apply standards of social acceptance to companies. Your employer may make you take seminars about discrimination in the work place, but then launch discriminator advertising campaigns, or out-source services to sweat-shops in third-world countries.
Taxing e-mail as a way to stop spam? So why not tax phone calls to stop phone solicitation? Or why not tax sending mail as a way to stop junk mail? (And no, that's not already taxed -- Remember, USPS is not a tax-supported organization)
I'm guessing the assumption is that taxing e-mail would make it too costly for spammers. But there's several critical flaws with that assumption:
Spammers make a lot of money, albeit in a shady fashion. A "miniscule" tax wouldn't be sufficient to deter spammers since there would still be significant financial gain
Taxing would have to be done at the ISP level, since there's no conceivable way to authoritatively verify each individual citizen's e-mail address. So the ISP's would pay the taxes and pass on the cost (theoretically) to their customers. Say, that sounds sort of like telco fees!
Spammers have long shown they have no ethics and are completely willing to violate both state and Federal law. So why not add tax evasion as well?
Not to mention the little fact that most spam is delivered through various proxies (open relays, open proxies, compromised systems, distributed spammer clients, etc). "Go ahead and tax it!" says Mr. Evil Spammer, "I'll just make sure Mrs. Jone's Flower Shop ends up with the bill! MOOO HAHAAHAHA"
Ok, let's review the options available once more:
Government controls
Technological controls
Sociological controls
Law enforcement
Well no one wants the US government to regulate e-mail. I don't want ANY government to regulate it. We've been fighting spam with technological controls for, what, a decade now? Since the spammers use technology as well, it's an endless arms race.
That leaves law enforcement and sociological controls. And by law enforcement I do not mean new laws outlawing spam. I mean standard, existing laws about fraud, theft, and other criminal acts.
Law enforcement has been hampered by lack of co-operation from those ripped off by spam (i.e. end-victims as well as ISPs, companies with hijacked systems, etc), insufficient technology and knowledge resources, and conflicting idea of jurisdiction. Yes, I spelled jurisdiction wrong damn it, I don't care.
This is where sociological controls can help. We, the victims of spammers, need to work with law enforcement! There needs to be a revolution in the mind-set that we don't share knowledge with the law. How many systems administrators have discovered clearly illegal activity in their ISP network and just quietly disconnected the offenders rather than reporting it? There's so much concern about civil litigation, violating customers privacy, etc. that even the most blatantly obvious scumbags can get away with not only ripping off a provider but never even being reported to the police.
That. Must. Stop.
Similarly, those that actually reply to spams need to be exposed. Not just the perverts wanting porno and the losers wanting a bigger penis, but all the desperate folks who want cheaper mortgate rates, low-interest credit cards, etc. If you know someone (friend, relative, co-worker) who has for whatever reason responded to spam, humiliate them. And I don't mean be an asshole and give out personal data. Just tell them they're an idiot, let their friends/co-workers/relatives know they are an idiot. Make it clearly how socially unacceptable that is.
Will that work? Ultimately there's no way to know without trying. With any change in human society (i.e. the industrial revolution, the rennaisance, man on the moon, the ATM, etc) our social behavior has altered to adopt to new problems as well as new opportunities. That change can be encouraged and consciously controlled.
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No, you're just being a fucking asshat.
Yes, I'm quite aware of the elemental themes in "The Way Things Go". It's sort of hard to miss the way they kept burning things, using water, balloons, etc. No. Fucking. Shit.
Again, my original comment stands. These concepts are not new, and claiming the Honda ad was a direct copy of "The Way Things Go" is self-indulgent ego-stroking. You're caught-up in the idea that you are an intellectual superior because you can see THE ART in a film made by a couple of Germans in a warehouse as an execuse to sponge money off the NEA and other organizations.
This doesn't make their creation any less fascinating or entertaining. It is, however, no more original than Honda's ad. Dumbass.
Here's the site to order it from.
As for the Cog ad being a rip-off of that film, while the grandparent post is idiotic. The Cog ad was very clearly an homage to Rube Goldberg devices, the likes of which have been shown in movies, TV shows and cartoons for well over fifty years. "The Way Things Go" isn't really innovative with the basic concept, it's just a nify piece done for the sake of doing it... And a nice demonstration of science in the process.
You are fucking moron. Or a cunting troll.
a) Cops can not legally just pull you over, handcuff you and perform invasive searches because of an "inventory management" incident. For that matter, no pig is stupid enough to waste that much effort on such an absolutely trivial crime.
b) Given such an absurd scenario as you postulate, cops would be far more likely to arrest whoever called them to report a non-existant crime.
c) I'm taking you up on your guarantee. Provide me absolute proof to your claim that any court in this country would consider a mere sensormatic alarm system in a grocery store going off to be probable cause of shoplifting..
I've personally had these fucking useless hatstands go off on me on so many occasions I can't count. Always because the cashier hadn't demagnetized the merchandise, or there was too long a delay in the line, or the phase of the moon wasn't in the right astronomical house. In EVERY. SINGLE. CASE. I was just waved on. No one ever demanded to see my receipt, verify my purchases, inspect my person or accused me of shoplifting.
Exactly one time I've seen one of these store alarm systems go off where it was someone actually shoplifting. The other uncountable events were as happened to me... Inept technology uselessly bleating about non-existant situations.
The plain fact of these "inventory control" alarms is they are to make employees and managers aware of possible loss. They do not impart magical new legal powers or functions to Joe Blow people. No one is ever under any legal requirement to stop just because one of the damned things go off. Even if an actual police officer is there. An actual eye-witness must be available, or you have to exhibit additional behavior such as bolting out the door, screaming "I didn't take nothing!", physically assaulting someone, etc. Just saying "Nope, your machine has no authority or validity over me" and continuing on your way as a lawful citizen is just that... Lawful.
Indeed. I work for a telco and we had a women's shelter as a customer at one point. Special arrangements were made so that the shelter's number would be unlisted, that the physical address of the shelter not be directly associated with the account, and that the domain registration be done entirely in our company's name.
This is typical, as a woman's shelter (which frequently also shelter's children) is literally trying to save people's lives. There's a lot of twisted fucks who think nothing of beating their own spouses, even their own babies until they are crippled or dead.
This story ignites a great deal of rage in me. Children are the, and I mean THE most critical resource to humanity. Air, water, food, those are just things we need to survive long enough to have children and raise them to adults. Each new generation is what provides continuinty of our species, as well as our culture.
Because of Mark Dennis, hundreds of children already living lives of questionable quality have had those lives put at greater risk. What a pathetic loser.
Check this JavaScript sample (raw-source view) to see how they check for not only Shockwave Flash but Windows Media player, QuickTime and some video-related plugin ("ntsc").
Looks like the only surefire way to block them is to add unicast.com entries to your local hosts file and/or proxy servers.
Hell, go buy a used one on eBay, with lifetime service included.
If you call a market of tens of millions of people a "niche", then yes.
Informative? What the frell is informative about this message? Jeez...
Guess what folks: We're geeks. We LIKE to do things our selves. We love to play with computers and scripts and Linux and hardware and ad nauseum. Beeing a geek means "doing it yourself", even for the sort of things our society doesn't think of as DIY.
The other 5 billion people on this planet DO NOT. For every Tivo subscriber who's a hardcore geek, there's going to be a dozen who don't give a shit. They just want it to work. They DO NOT even remotely have the skills or experience needed, and they actually like everything to be in one compact little box.
This sort of pathetic one-eyed, unidirectional mindset is why geeks, no matter how smart, can hardly ever make a real commercial success for themselves. Geeks just can't seem to comprehend the market...
TiVo is a service company! They sell a SERVICE! Hell, they only started selling their own equipment a couple of years ago. The vast majority of Tivo devices are actually manufactured and sold by companies other than Tivo.
So yes, it makes perfect sense that Tivo is looking for new ways to expand their service offering.
But you're a geek. Joe Sixpack could give a fuck about you and your whining on DRM. Joe Sixpack probably doesn't own a PC, or it's some stock Gateway/Dell/Packard Bell with Joe Average specs. Joe Sixpack really likes being able to have the Tivo record stuff for him without his having to keep track of when a show's on. Joe Sixpack loves being able to skip commercials. And Joe Sixpack likes instant replaying the shots of those girls bouncing up and down on 'THe Man Show'. "Catching up" to MythTV is an amusing idea. TiVo is a pioneer in PVR tech. THey are WAY more serious about this than a bunch of geeks like us. They want to make money. Lots of it. Finding a way to make it easy for people to violate copyrights by trading TV shows/movies on the Internet is highly incompatible with that goal. Frankly, I'm most interested in the Tivo/DVD burner combo units. The ability to transfer a Tivo show to my PC is only marginally interesting to me... Of course at some point someone will figure out a way to crack that, and Tivo will either start getting sued..... Or start suing. :(
As far as I know we haven't received any legal letters, though I'm not sure if I'd hear about it immediately if we did. Doesn't seem likely we would though because the majority of visible servers are, sadly, Winblows...
Actually, one of our IT directors likes Linux now, because it's so cheap. While he isn't in favor of it as our primary computing platform, he's mentioned it as a possible thin-client solution for sales.
Why not? Because the issue isn't "How do I filter spam?" THe issue is "How do I stop spam from being created in the first place?"
This is actually one of the stupidest ideas I've heard in a while. Let's see...a) Doesn't stop spammers from sending e-mail in the first place
See above. Also, it wastes valuable time and resources to pursue the idea...b) Naive idea that "[...] a computational "price" of a 10-second levy would mean spammers would only be able to send about 8,000 messages a day, at most".[1]
c) Ends up delaying delivery of legitimate e-mail!
d) Useless unless supported by both e-mail clients and MTA's.
e) Will add yet more complexity, cost, administration, explanation and general headaches to an e-mail system that used to be frelling useful.
Remember, Spam is a social problem. Spammers are, by nature, criminals. Not just because spamming is illegal in many states, not just because spammers will literally break-into computer systems just to launch campaigns, but also because frequently the content of the spam itself is illegal.
Frankly, as with any crime, it's not likely it will ever go away. The best we can do is make it less profitable for the spammers. To accomplish that, we need to punish those who encourage spam, at the least socially.
If you know someone who's ever responded to an obvious spam, rail them for it! Publically humiliate them and explain how incredibly stupid and thoughtless they are. Shun them. Mock them. And most importantly, educate them.
[1] Does Mr. Wobbler really think a spammer is just one guy on one PC sending e-mail out all by his lonesome? What good does this sytem do when spammers launch massive parallel sessions, using not only multiple dedicated T-1 lines but literally hundreds upon hundreds of open relays and proxies? What the hell sort of name is "Mr. Wobbler"?!!!
It's bad enough that any child molesting pervert can enjoy near-total anonymity thanks to war-driving or simply visiting a McCafe sponsorted hot-spot... Now spammers and other Internet scumbags will enjoy total freedom of momement as they slowly pillage what usefulness there is left in the Internet...
Damn it.
It's funny how there's such a strong movement for alternative music (i.e. not mainstream, corporate music but independent label stuff), but there's no such thing yet for video.
It appears to be happening though. Ordinary people can afford the tools to make their own mini-movies, TV shows, etc. The internet makes it possible to share/broadcast these creations. Which means the MPAA and other visual-media organizations and companies will start to lash-out not just at copyright infringements but at the technology itself.
Or maybe not...
A far, far cry from something like BonzoBuddy or Gator. Note that there is huge difference between ad-free and sponsor-free. Hell, not even Slashdot is sponsor free.
This wasn't such an unreasonable post except for this line. It's a really tired backhand, at least try something clever...However, Winamp has pretty much always been free as in beer. Even when they had registration, there was a distinction between the Lite version and the Pro version. At one point I think they were even planning to do "adware" though I'm not sure if a release with that was ever done.
Over here is a complete archive of Winamp releases, except the none of the frelling links work. But you can see the release history at least. At a certain point, Nullsoft was bought by AOL and thus didn't need to do the shareware/registration thing anymore.
As for Open Source, Nullsoft has released a lot of OpenSource stuff, pretty much all for Windows. The most useful being their installer program, I've seen a lot of freeware packages use NSIS. Here's all the programs Nullsoft has released recently. I've always liked Nullsoft's naming approach...
(Historical note: One of the most popular plugins for Winamp has been Geiss, developed by Mr. Ryan Geiss. He originally wrote it independently. Then he got a job with Creative Labs working on Oozic, Creative's own idea for a media player with nifty visuals. Oozic started life as Lava but had to change names, probably for trademark reasons. Sadly, Creative Tech turned asswipe with Oozic, declaring it only available for those who bought their hardware and had it on the driver CD. Anyways, Mr. Geiss left Creative to go work for Nullsoft! Where he developed some more nifty visualization tools such as Milkdrop and Geiss II.)
(BONUS Historical note: Before Winamp, before multi-media players with visualization plugins, there was Cthugha by Kevin "Zaph" Burfitt. Cthugha started life as a DOS freeware program that did pretty VGA animations in synch with music from an audio CD. Eventually a version was developed for Windows 95, and 3D support was even added providing you used a 3DFX card. Sadly the project has languished for years now but not before Kevin released source and a number of folks ported Cthugha to MacOS, Linux, Java and yes, even a Winamp plugin!)
In reality, what's happening is they are probably squandering large amounts of money on church tithes, "charity" and the like. Oh, and however much she spends on computer equipment, bandwidth, etc... We don't have access to their finances so there's no way to really know.
The idea that the spamming is OK because it's for a "good cause" is reprehensible. Is it ok if I shoot you in the head? I think it's for a good cause. No IT'S NOT OK!!! The ends do not justify the means. There's an unlimited number of ways one can do chairity and good in the world without simultaneously doing bad.
And what the fuck does that have to do with the rest of the entire topic? Dumbass.On the other hand, this significantly increases the resources needed to deliver and receive e-mail. Not only is more processing time needed, but significantly more bandwidth as well. Every single e-mail message, including NDR's and warning messages, would have an extra hundred bytes (guesstimate) for the key in the header. Plus the MTA's would need to do additional DNS queries in order to look-up the keys.
Sure it's a pretty small increase in resources on an individual scale. But when an ISP is processing 100,000 messages a day it adds up. Overall it means more e-mail would be delayed.
One could hope that the trade-off in extra bandwidth and CPU resources would balance out with significantly less spam. But Spammers have already shown their willingness to do anything illegal to get what they want. Breaking into servers to steal private keys would certainly not be above the ethics of spammer, nor beyond their technical abilities. Sure they may not be able to break into Yahoo's server, but Joe Sixpacks home-business server?
Here's the other big gotcha with this scheme... Assuming this is done at the level of the domain names and not just the MTAs, we could see a situation arise where users wouldn't be able to send e-mail out except with the domain name of their ISP provider. Right now I use RoadRunner's SMTP server to send all my e-mail but I'm not using my RR e-mailboxes (except to collect spam). Of course this is why spam is so easy to do in the first place... the SMTP server doesn't attempt to validate my username OR domain name.
Maybe the aim for "Domain Keys" is to allow the MTAs to verify each other's identities and won't rely strictly on the domain name. But would it hurt Yahoo! or AOL if users of their networks were locked-in to using just their e-mail addresses?
You just fed sample text pieces to the program to analyze and let it generate text. You had several "channels" and could adjust the mixture of these channels. You also had various "effects" that could be added, such as Dyslexia, Lisp, Canadian, Pig Latin, etc... And those could also be mixed.
As far as I can tell, the poetry program uses the same essential techniques of text analyzing and re-mixing, just more dedicated to a specific output.
Oh, you can download Babble from here if you want to play with it.
My response could be considered aimed at the thread in general and not just your message.
Come on people, there's SIX BILLION humans on this planet. Quit thinking your religion and customs are the only ones that count.
It's admirable to give the poor a special Christmas, but then comes the quandries. Why didn't you do it during some other time of year? Why only do it during the (incorrect) birthday of Jesus? How poor is poor? Aren't you doing it because you're afraid of going to Hell, or selfishly trying to guarantee a way for yourself into Heaven?
There's a disturbing atmosphere of "one-upmanship" around all this charity bragging. Just do whatever you feel like for Christmas and stop bitching that other people don't follow your lead.
P.S.
This isn't flamebait. My father's an ordained Episcopal minister.
In the USPS, if a letter is mis-addressed but has a correct return address it will be returned to the sender at no cost, delivered right to their mailbox.
This happened in the city I live in in 1995.
It led to the establishment of regular security guards, an electronic badge entry system, and relocation of the mailroom. Note that this was not an internally delivered package but a mail sent through regular postal mail. And the USPS did not detect it.
Nor did they detect a second package sent by the same perp, though they did mis-deliver it to the mall across the street.
Because there are clear and established laws about making threats of a physical nature against people. The perp here was actually threatening individual persons with bodily harm. Law enforcement is obligated to assume the threats are serious and not jokes.
So one can't blame law enforcement for arresting and charging the guy.
But why are the spammers not being scrutinized for their behavior? While they weren't threatening the man with physical violence or bodily harm, they were very clearly harassing him.
As has been pointed out, activity like that from an individual person (sexually explicit/suggestive materials forcibly delivered to your mailbox) would be considered illegal as well, at the very least a misdemeanor.
Unfortunately it has become all too common for human society to accept behavior from businesses and corporations that would never be acceptable from individuals. Why have so many companies been able to get away with designing, printing and distributing blatantly racist and discriminatory T-shirts (Target's "88" fiasco, the "Wong Bros Laundry" fiasco) and then pretending it was all a mistake? For that matter, how come we get television ads that are blatantly racist/discriminatory? TV ads aren't made up in a matter of minutes. It takes months to write, produce, edit, review, etc...
It's because people just automatically don't apply standards of social acceptance to companies. Your employer may make you take seminars about discrimination in the work place, but then launch discriminator advertising campaigns, or out-source services to sweat-shops in third-world countries.
I'm guessing the assumption is that taxing e-mail would make it too costly for spammers. But there's several critical flaws with that assumption:
Not to mention the little fact that most spam is delivered through various proxies (open relays, open proxies, compromised systems, distributed spammer clients, etc). "Go ahead and tax it!" says Mr. Evil Spammer, "I'll just make sure Mrs. Jone's Flower Shop ends up with the bill! MOOO HAHAAHAHA"
Ok, let's review the options available once more:
Well no one wants the US government to regulate e-mail. I don't want ANY government to regulate it. We've been fighting spam with technological controls for, what, a decade now? Since the spammers use technology as well, it's an endless arms race.
That leaves law enforcement and sociological controls. And by law enforcement I do not mean new laws outlawing spam. I mean standard, existing laws about fraud, theft, and other criminal acts.
Law enforcement has been hampered by lack of co-operation from those ripped off by spam (i.e. end-victims as well as ISPs, companies with hijacked systems, etc), insufficient technology and knowledge resources, and conflicting idea of jurisdiction. Yes, I spelled jurisdiction wrong damn it, I don't care.
This is where sociological controls can help. We, the victims of spammers, need to work with law enforcement! There needs to be a revolution in the mind-set that we don't share knowledge with the law. How many systems administrators have discovered clearly illegal activity in their ISP network and just quietly disconnected the offenders rather than reporting it? There's so much concern about civil litigation, violating customers privacy, etc. that even the most blatantly obvious scumbags can get away with not only ripping off a provider but never even being reported to the police.
That. Must. Stop.
Similarly, those that actually reply to spams need to be exposed. Not just the perverts wanting porno and the losers wanting a bigger penis, but all the desperate folks who want cheaper mortgate rates, low-interest credit cards, etc. If you know someone (friend, relative, co-worker) who has for whatever reason responded to spam, humiliate them. And I don't mean be an asshole and give out personal data. Just tell them they're an idiot, let their friends/co-workers/relatives know they are an idiot. Make it clearly how socially unacceptable that is.
Will that work? Ultimately there's no way to know without trying. With any change in human society (i.e. the industrial revolution, the rennaisance, man on the moon, the ATM, etc) our social behavior has altered to adopt to new problems as well as new opportunities. That change can be encouraged and consciously controlled.