Unfortunatly where I work most passwords have to conform to the same standard but must be rotated every 3 months and can't repeat for a year. Password security can easily go overboard. At my last workplace there was an insane setup - of the five passwords I had, one had to be changed every 30 days and the genius programmer who made the application* had mis-coded a check for dictionary-based passwords. Any occurrence of ANY dictionary word failed and gave a cranky error/warning about not picking easy passwords. (Without explaining WHY it was easy, for maximum user frustration.) The password "1F@62it76#" was deemed not easy because of the "it" in the middle.
(* The only reason I don't add "genius tester" is because I suspect the app was never tested.)
It's not so much the initial misidentification that bothers me, it's that they employee front line support who shouldn't be allowed to play with Big Boy Scissors, let alone to deal with technical issues.
Please. Doing things way out of one's expertise level is de rigeur for front line support. That's why they say things like that you need to try rebooting your PC when you call to report an area-wide service outage; or insist that no computer has ever had a resolution of 640x480 because their slider doesn't go that low; or that no, you're not running Windows 2000, you're running Windows Millennium; or that your hard drive can't be a Western Digital because that's really Pacific Digital and they don't make hard drives - you see, the difference between a hard drive and a floppy drive is....
Can you see the unwashed hippy behind the counter saying that the CARD says I'm a female lion trainer because some tit miscaptured the data? And refusing to change it because "the computer can't be wrong"
Unwashed hippy? Please. I've had more trouble from people in neat little outfits. A particularly stupid medical database at this one hospital determined that only pregnant women got a certain series of blood tests. I've been directed to the maternity department by the desk jockeys more times than I can count. (And if I wasn't, my blood was.)
Well, I wasn't pregnant, and for good reason: I'm a guy. Quite clearly. Deep voice, male features, facial hair, little "M" next to my name on my hospital ID and photo ID. Want to lose faith in humanity quickly? Watch a person trust a computer screen saying something like "this is maternal bloodwork" in preference to the overwhelming evidence that the person in front of them is a man. Then watch a completely different person do the same thing one month later. (To their credit, a few of the people I dealt with just got a kick out of it and then told the computer to send the bloodwork to the proper place. But it hardly makes up for the ones who assumed that an autofilled field on their screen had been brought down the mountain on stone tablets.)
Haven't played BioShock but I have to ask - did you just basically say that the mysterious benefactor/taskmaster radio voice in the game turns out to be evil? The exact same, ahem, plot twist used in System Shock 2?
Sorry, perhaps I'm just being cynical. I hated System Shock 2, so anything spawned from that lineage gets my jaundiced eye.
It is "ironic" because the comic book form received 0% of the vote in that poll, yet it's the only one we get.
So we can use a poll to alter the accuracy of the article text? This is a million times better than tagging! I support development of this reality-by-consensus feature until we get to the point where we can poll the MPAA and RIAA into oblivion. (Unfortunately, knowing Slashdotters, we'd probably just unwittingly fuse them into the CowboyNeal Association of America.)
I hear you. When I was a kid I was not only read to, but once I got old enough my parents got me a tape recorder and a mass of those books with included audio tape reading, including a musical sting to let you know when to turn the page. Like any kid, I had a tolerance for the seeing same thing a hundred times. I could put one of those on and effectively have the same book read to me dozens of times. That, and my mom did teach me phonics.
This reminds me of something, actually - a testament to modern parenting, or the lack thereof. Some time after I finished high school I switched barbers, as there was a new guy starting up and he couldn't be worse than the only other game in town. I knew the new guy was the older brother of a kid I went to school with, but I'd never seen him before (and I hadn't seen his brother in about ten years).
So I sat down in the barber's chair and he looked at me funny. He asked me my name. I told him. He said he remembered me from school. Elementary school.
I was quite surprised, and pressed for more info. So he told me a story.
"When I was a kid, I walked by a class and saw you reading a book to the class. Something about the days of the week. And you weren't even having trouble with words like 'Wednesday'. It was amazing, because you were the only little kid I'd seen who could really read!"
He had been so amazed that he'd asked his brother who I was and still remembered the event and my name, about fourteen years later.
(And yes, one of my teachers would occasionally sneak out for a smoke break and leave me to read a book to class. And the duty always fell to me, because I was the only literate child in class.)
> With such a large sample size, I can see how they have > conclusive proof that the ESRB is not doing their job.
It's a sample size 2 games larger than some of our esteemed justices have used, which therefore makes it even more infallible. We certainly can't allow games such as "The Resident of Evil Creek" to fall into the hands of children.
Nice. Here's a less funny one I once used on my webpage. The template for this was HP's website EULA.
ATTENTION: PLEASE READ THESE TERMS CAREFULLY BEFORE USING THIS WEB SITE. USING THIS WEB SITE INDICATES THAT YOU ACCEPT THESE TERMS, EVEN IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THEM. IF YOU DO NOT ACCEPT THESE TERMS, DO NOT USE THIS WEB SITE. IN OTHER WORDS, YOU'RE ALREADY SCREWED.
Use of Site. The Archon ("God") authorizes you to view and download the materials at this Web site ("Kewl Page") only for your personal, non-commercial use, provided that you retain all copyright and other proprietary notices contained in the original materials on any copies of the materials. You may not modify the materials at this Kewl Page in any way, including cunningly changing all the page design and content to make it look like another website. You may not reproduce or publicly display, perform - this page is particularly suited to interpretive dance - distribute or otherwise use them for any public or commercial purpose. For purposes of these Terms, any use of these materials damn near anywhere is prohibited. The materials at this Kewl Page are copyrighted and any unauthorized use of any materials at this Kewl Page may violate copyright, trademark, the DMCA, and other laws that have no rights being on the books. If you breach any of these Terms, your authorization to use this Kewl Page automatically terminates and you must immediately destroy any downloaded or printed materials. Or we'll destroy you.
Use of Software. If you download software from this Kewl Page ("w4R3z"), use of the w4R3z is subject to the license terms in the w4R3z License Agreement that accompanies or is provided with the w4R3z. You may not download or install the w4R3z until you have read and accepted the terms of the w4R3z License Agreement.
User Submissions. Any material, information or other communication you transmit or post to or in the general worldwide vicinity of this Kewl Page will be considered non-confidential and non-proprietary ("Chit-Chat"). God will have no obligations with respect to the Chit-Chat. God and His designees will be free to copy, disclose, distribute, incorporate, assimilate, renovate, impregnate, and otherwise use the Chit-Chat and all data, images, sounds, text, and other things embodied therein for any and all commercial or non-commercial purposes. They can even print off your Chit-Chat and rub it all over their naked bodies if they want, which they probably do. You are prohibited from posting or transmitting to or from this Kewl Page any unlawful, threatening, libelous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, or other material that would violate any law. Of course, we'll still keep copies of all the good stuff hidden in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Office\Shared DLLs and VXDs\VXD\Subsystem X301J V2.03\GoatPr0n on our hard drives. God may, but is not obligated or willing to, monitor or review any areas on the Kewl Page where users transmit or post Chit-Chat or communicate solely with each other, including but not limited to chat rooms, bulletin boards, special Trojan Horse spyware built into our programs, or other user forums, and the content of any such Chit-Chat. God, however, will have no liability related to the content of any such Chit-Chat, whether or not arising under the laws of libel, obscenity, privacy, obscenity, copyright, obscenity, or otherwise. God retains the right to remove messages that include any material deemed abusive, defamatory, obscene or otherwise unacceptable. Any messages which attempt to show God in a negative light will be deemed abusive, defamatory, obscene and unacceptable.
Links To Other Web Sites. Links to third party Web sites on this Kewl Page are provided solely as a convenience to you, even though you don't deserve such kindness. If you use these links, you will leave this Kewl Page. God has not reviewed all of these third party sites and does not control and is not responsible for any of these sites or their content. Thus, God does not endorse or make any representations about
Then stop making me change my account passwords every 30 days!
Oh, man, tell me about it. I did technical work at a call center for a while and it was a nightmare. We had:
1) Network logon.
2) The company's technical info site.
3) Our own locally-done technical info site.
4) Our company's payroll site.
5) The company's program for sending out replacement hardware.
Every one with different password replacement requirements. Some 30 days, some 90, some the first Monday of every 3rd month (!), some never. And each one had a different requirement for type of password. Some were okay with dictionary words, but one required mixed case, symbols, numbers, AND no components could be dictionary words. That meant that the password "1f@62iT76#" would fail because of the "iT" - "it" is a word, after all! With all the two-letter words out there, that effectively meant every password had to be number-letter-number-letter-symbol-letter, etc.
Several of them wouldn't let you re-use passwords, so you couldn't build up a "stable" of good ones. I gave up and had to write everything down. Kept the list on me, though.
The whole mess was compounded by the fact that we couldn't contact anyone directly for anything but the payroll password (which you had to call another call center and wait on hold for). Everything else had to go through a supervisor, who - assuming you found one - would usually just order you to bum one off someone else until he could e-mail IT. To top it off, one prize of a supervisor we had would never remember which was which. Once I asked about being locked out (you mistyped your network logon twice IIRC, locked out for a week) and an hour later an IT guy came up to me and said "Your website password was reset, change it within 3 days." Evidently not the first time it happened - when I started complaining that's not what my problem was, he pulled out a hardcopy of the supervisor's e-mail. Indeed, the supe had, after I explained to him exactly what was wrong and he explained it back to me to show he understood, had my website password changed, not my logon unlocked. IT guy left, lockout ended soon thereafter.
On a side note, I have to leave Texas before my children get in to school. I already had my "linux" fish ripped off my car once since I moved here.
So, was it done by BSD-using atheists, or Linux-using Christians?:)
Seriously, though, to anyone considering such a move: I suspect it will do little good. There's nuts everywhere. I saw one teacher who had - if you believed this person - seen a UFO. Classic cigar-shaped crap out of a dozen different alien books. How's a teacher saying "God made little green apples." worse than a teacher saying "If you're not careful, the little green men will fall from the sky and kidnap you. And the police won't help you, they work for the little green men!"?
Running away from a creationist teacher bogeyman might just make you fall into another pit you're not expecting. One of the things my mom taught me served me well all through my schooling: Don't trust your teachers. Once, way back when, my teacher had short in her wiring and taught the class that 100x100 = 1000. Didn't make sense to me, being a math whiz, so I asked about it. The other students were HORRIFIED that I dared question the teacher! The teacher, OTOH, was grateful.
It's hard work, but you have to ask you kids what they did. Every day. What they learned, stuff the kids did, etc. Just keep it light, like a conversation, and the kid won't feel like they're being questioned. You might have to put up with a lot of inane "Bobby ate a bug!" and "We learned our one times tables! One times one is one, two times one...." but one day, you might just hit a gold mine of intense wrongness that your child is being subjected to - like the time my class was taken off school grounds without permission to attend a church service. Then you can either take steps to remove it using the system, or, if that's impossible, teach your kid to play the system, write down the answers that makes the system happy while not believing them. Teaching critical thought doesn't hurt either, as they never get it in school. (I am also deeply grateful for my mom teaching me how to use lies of omission to my advantage. Telling the literal truth while leaving a false impression is a very handy talent.)
Worth remembering: It's a lot easier to get rid of something the kid's been believing half a day than something she's been believing half a decade.
It's based on the sums of the ASCII values of Slashdot posts. And ALL YOU GUYS ARE MESSING ME UP!!!!! Damn it, before that last AC posted, I was set for a horde of naked virgins carrying gold bars to appoint me their god. I'll sue you all! In fact, I'll give you all warts! Watch this:
sdfhiow45yq03nbkcfg
Ha! I now predict that you'll wake up tomorrow with warts, or maybe syphilis. See how you like them apples!
Not to "me too!" a comment, but Just yesterday I was driving by a parking lot and in the far corner your standard "crotch rocket" motorcycle was sitting all on its own. I couldn't help but think it was placed there specifically because it would trigger a mini-game.
Well this is a "Me too!" comment. Back after I finished playing Deus Ex, I was in the hospital getting bloodwork done. I walked into the phlebotomist's room and noticed a set of lockers built into the wall. First thing I thought of doing was sticking a LAM on the middle locker, backing off, taking out a gun and shooting the LAM so it would detonate I could loot the lockers.
Of course, I had neither explosives nor a gun.
So I just took out my police baton and beat some random people up.
Even now a days scientists in the lab often peroform semi-"silly" experiments (late at night) which are based on only partial understanding and hunch. Those often yield intersting results which warrant proper scinetific research.
Indeed. Just look at the headlines for February '03's Journal of Shindig-Based Research, from the International Institute of Educated Guesses:
A Theoretical Case for the Existence and Properties of the Uvulon: Chicks Dig It
Superconductivity and the Superbowl
Electron Shells as Resonators: I Am So Fucked Up Right Now
>But I've turned bread into mold! >Fear my awesome powers!
Fiddle-faddle. You've just used the natural laws of spontaneous generation to form life from nonliving matter. It is as trivial as falling off a bicycle; such things no longer impress a jaded scientist such as myself.
... does that mean that anyone caught defeating it is a "professional" pirate? Imagine in court:
"Your honor, we have measures in place to defeat the casual pirate, the regular joe who copies the occasional CD. The only people who can defeat these measures are intelligent and corrupt individuals who seek to destroy the music industry for their own gain. Since the defendant has successfully broken our protection, he is therefore a professional pirate! This is why we are seeking ten million dollars in damages, rather than our usual ten thousand. We must send a strong message to those who would steal from the wallets of hardworking sound booth technicians and CD press workers to pad their own bank accounts."
... because I'm too lazy to write up an actual opinion.
"The need to be observed and understood was once satisfied by God. Now we can implement the same functionality with data-mining algorithms."
- the Morpheus AI, "Deus Ex"
Slashdot Mirror
...until AI gets smart enough to answer questions intuitively.
So Skynet is going to cause not Judgment Day, but Judgment September That Never Ended?
(* The only reason I don't add "genius tester" is because I suspect the app was never tested.)
Please. Doing things way out of one's expertise level is de rigeur for front line support. That's why they say things like that you need to try rebooting your PC when you call to report an area-wide service outage; or insist that no computer has ever had a resolution of 640x480 because their slider doesn't go that low; or that no, you're not running Windows 2000, you're running Windows Millennium; or that your hard drive can't be a Western Digital because that's really Pacific Digital and they don't make hard drives - you see, the difference between a hard drive and a floppy drive is....
Unwashed hippy? Please. I've had more trouble from people in neat little outfits. A particularly stupid medical database at this one hospital determined that only pregnant women got a certain series of blood tests. I've been directed to the maternity department by the desk jockeys more times than I can count. (And if I wasn't, my blood was.)
Well, I wasn't pregnant, and for good reason: I'm a guy. Quite clearly. Deep voice, male features, facial hair, little "M" next to my name on my hospital ID and photo ID. Want to lose faith in humanity quickly? Watch a person trust a computer screen saying something like "this is maternal bloodwork" in preference to the overwhelming evidence that the person in front of them is a man. Then watch a completely different person do the same thing one month later. (To their credit, a few of the people I dealt with just got a kick out of it and then told the computer to send the bloodwork to the proper place. But it hardly makes up for the ones who assumed that an autofilled field on their screen had been brought down the mountain on stone tablets.)
Pshaw. What woman doesn't like a nice hothouse cucumber?:)
Tehnically, no one explicitly said HE had to be involved either.;) I hope his hot sister-in-law doesn't have a hot boyfriend!
So does a five-year-old, but that's hardly conclusive!
Uhhh... don't ask how I know that.
Haven't played BioShock but I have to ask - did you just basically say that the mysterious benefactor/taskmaster radio voice in the game turns out to be evil? The exact same, ahem, plot twist used in System Shock 2?
Sorry, perhaps I'm just being cynical. I hated System Shock 2, so anything spawned from that lineage gets my jaundiced eye.
So we can use a poll to alter the accuracy of the article text? This is a million times better than tagging! I support development of this reality-by-consensus feature until we get to the point where we can poll the MPAA and RIAA into oblivion. (Unfortunately, knowing Slashdotters, we'd probably just unwittingly fuse them into the CowboyNeal Association of America.)
> It's become self-aware!!
Sk-iNet?
This reminds me of something, actually - a testament to modern parenting, or the lack thereof. Some time after I finished high school I switched barbers, as there was a new guy starting up and he couldn't be worse than the only other game in town. I knew the new guy was the older brother of a kid I went to school with, but I'd never seen him before (and I hadn't seen his brother in about ten years).
So I sat down in the barber's chair and he looked at me funny. He asked me my name. I told him. He said he remembered me from school. Elementary school.
I was quite surprised, and pressed for more info. So he told me a story.
"When I was a kid, I walked by a class and saw you reading a book to the class. Something about the days of the week. And you weren't even having trouble with words like 'Wednesday'. It was amazing, because you were the only little kid I'd seen who could really read!"
He had been so amazed that he'd asked his brother who I was and still remembered the event and my name, about fourteen years later.
(And yes, one of my teachers would occasionally sneak out for a smoke break and leave me to read a book to class. And the duty always fell to me, because I was the only literate child in class.)
> With such a large sample size, I can see how they have
> conclusive proof that the ESRB is not doing their job.
It's a sample size 2 games larger than some of our esteemed justices have used, which therefore makes it even more infallible. We certainly can't allow games such as "The Resident of Evil Creek" to fall into the hands of children.
Nice. Here's a less funny one I once used on my webpage. The template for this was HP's website EULA.
ATTENTION: PLEASE READ THESE TERMS CAREFULLY BEFORE USING THIS WEB SITE. USING THIS WEB SITE INDICATES THAT YOU ACCEPT THESE TERMS, EVEN IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THEM. IF YOU DO NOT ACCEPT THESE TERMS, DO NOT USE THIS WEB SITE. IN OTHER WORDS, YOU'RE ALREADY SCREWED.
Use of Site. The Archon ("God") authorizes you to view and download the materials at this Web site ("Kewl Page") only for your personal, non-commercial use, provided that you retain all copyright and other proprietary notices contained in the original materials on any copies of the materials. You may not modify the materials at this Kewl Page in any way, including cunningly changing all the page design and content to make it look like another website. You may not reproduce or publicly display, perform - this page is particularly suited to interpretive dance - distribute or otherwise use them for any public or commercial purpose. For purposes of these Terms, any use of these materials damn near anywhere is prohibited. The materials at this Kewl Page are copyrighted and any unauthorized use of any materials at this Kewl Page may violate copyright, trademark, the DMCA, and other laws that have no rights being on the books. If you breach any of these Terms, your authorization to use this Kewl Page automatically terminates and you must immediately destroy any downloaded or printed materials. Or we'll destroy you.
Use of Software. If you download software from this Kewl Page ("w4R3z"), use of the w4R3z is subject to the license terms in the w4R3z License Agreement that accompanies or is provided with the w4R3z. You may not download or install the w4R3z until you have read and accepted the terms of the w4R3z License Agreement.
User Submissions. Any material, information or other communication you transmit or post to or in the general worldwide vicinity of this Kewl Page will be considered non-confidential and non-proprietary ("Chit-Chat"). God will have no obligations with respect to the Chit-Chat. God and His designees will be free to copy, disclose, distribute, incorporate, assimilate, renovate, impregnate, and otherwise use the Chit-Chat and all data, images, sounds, text, and other things embodied therein for any and all commercial or non-commercial purposes. They can even print off your Chit-Chat and rub it all over their naked bodies if they want, which they probably do. You are prohibited from posting or transmitting to or from this Kewl Page any unlawful, threatening, libelous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, or other material that would violate any law. Of course, we'll still keep copies of all the good stuff hidden in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Office\Shared DLLs and VXDs\VXD\Subsystem X301J V2.03\GoatPr0n on our hard drives. God may, but is not obligated or willing to, monitor or review any areas on the Kewl Page where users transmit or post Chit-Chat or communicate solely with each other, including but not limited to chat rooms, bulletin boards, special Trojan Horse spyware built into our programs, or other user forums, and the content of any such Chit-Chat. God, however, will have no liability related to the content of any such Chit-Chat, whether or not arising under the laws of libel, obscenity, privacy, obscenity, copyright, obscenity, or otherwise. God retains the right to remove messages that include any material deemed abusive, defamatory, obscene or otherwise unacceptable. Any messages which attempt to show God in a negative light will be deemed abusive, defamatory, obscene and unacceptable.
Links To Other Web Sites. Links to third party Web sites on this Kewl Page are provided solely as a convenience to you, even though you don't deserve such kindness. If you use these links, you will leave this Kewl Page. God has not reviewed all of these third party sites and does not control and is not responsible for any of these sites or their content. Thus, God does not endorse or make any representations about
Oh, man, tell me about it. I did technical work at a call center for a while and it was a nightmare. We had:
1) Network logon.
2) The company's technical info site.
3) Our own locally-done technical info site.
4) Our company's payroll site.
5) The company's program for sending out replacement hardware.
Every one with different password replacement requirements. Some 30 days, some 90, some the first Monday of every 3rd month (!), some never. And each one had a different requirement for type of password. Some were okay with dictionary words, but one required mixed case, symbols, numbers, AND no components could be dictionary words. That meant that the password "1f@62iT76#" would fail because of the "iT" - "it" is a word, after all! With all the two-letter words out there, that effectively meant every password had to be number-letter-number-letter-symbol-letter, etc.
Several of them wouldn't let you re-use passwords, so you couldn't build up a "stable" of good ones. I gave up and had to write everything down. Kept the list on me, though.
The whole mess was compounded by the fact that we couldn't contact anyone directly for anything but the payroll password (which you had to call another call center and wait on hold for). Everything else had to go through a supervisor, who - assuming you found one - would usually just order you to bum one off someone else until he could e-mail IT. To top it off, one prize of a supervisor we had would never remember which was which. Once I asked about being locked out (you mistyped your network logon twice IIRC, locked out for a week) and an hour later an IT guy came up to me and said "Your website password was reset, change it within 3 days." Evidently not the first time it happened - when I started complaining that's not what my problem was, he pulled out a hardcopy of the supervisor's e-mail. Indeed, the supe had, after I explained to him exactly what was wrong and he explained it back to me to show he understood, had my website password changed, not my logon unlocked. IT guy left, lockout ended soon thereafter.
So, was it done by BSD-using atheists, or Linux-using Christians?:)
Seriously, though, to anyone considering such a move: I suspect it will do little good. There's nuts everywhere. I saw one teacher who had - if you believed this person - seen a UFO. Classic cigar-shaped crap out of a dozen different alien books. How's a teacher saying "God made little green apples." worse than a teacher saying "If you're not careful, the little green men will fall from the sky and kidnap you. And the police won't help you, they work for the little green men!"?
Running away from a creationist teacher bogeyman might just make you fall into another pit you're not expecting. One of the things my mom taught me served me well all through my schooling: Don't trust your teachers. Once, way back when, my teacher had short in her wiring and taught the class that 100x100 = 1000. Didn't make sense to me, being a math whiz, so I asked about it. The other students were HORRIFIED that I dared question the teacher! The teacher, OTOH, was grateful.
It's hard work, but you have to ask you kids what they did. Every day. What they learned, stuff the kids did, etc. Just keep it light, like a conversation, and the kid won't feel like they're being questioned. You might have to put up with a lot of inane "Bobby ate a bug!" and "We learned our one times tables! One times one is one, two times one...." but one day, you might just hit a gold mine of intense wrongness that your child is being subjected to - like the time my class was taken off school grounds without permission to attend a church service. Then you can either take steps to remove it using the system, or, if that's impossible, teach your kid to play the system, write down the answers that makes the system happy while not believing them. Teaching critical thought doesn't hurt either, as they never get it in school. (I am also deeply grateful for my mom teaching me how to use lies of omission to my advantage. Telling the literal truth while leaving a false impression is a very handy talent.)
Worth remembering: It's a lot easier to get rid of something the kid's been believing half a day than something she's been believing half a decade.
It's based on the sums of the ASCII values of Slashdot posts. And ALL YOU GUYS ARE MESSING ME UP!!!!! Damn it, before that last AC posted, I was set for a horde of naked virgins carrying gold bars to appoint me their god. I'll sue you all! In fact, I'll give you all warts! Watch this:
sdfhiow45yq03nbkcfg
Ha! I now predict that you'll wake up tomorrow with warts, or maybe syphilis. See how you like them apples!
Well this is a "Me too!" comment. Back after I finished playing Deus Ex, I was in the hospital getting bloodwork done. I walked into the phlebotomist's room and noticed a set of lockers built into the wall. First thing I thought of doing was sticking a LAM on the middle locker, backing off, taking out a gun and shooting the LAM so it would detonate I could loot the lockers.
Of course, I had neither explosives nor a gun.
So I just took out my police baton and beat some random people up.
> Miss piggie and kermit are selling pizza, ugg...
Worse than that, remember the ads for Denny's?
With Miss Piggy ordering several large breakfasts?
Immediately followed by a shot of said breakfasts, which included bacon?
My inner child died the day I saw Miss Piggy advocating cannibalism.
Indeed. Just look at the headlines for February '03's Journal of Shindig-Based Research, from the International Institute of Educated Guesses:
A Theoretical Case for the Existence and Properties of the Uvulon: Chicks Dig It
Superconductivity and the Superbowl
Electron Shells as Resonators: I Am So Fucked Up Right Now
Is That Ham? A Quantum Approach
Beholders: Rar!
(Gnu Bless Lore Sjoberg.)
>But I've turned bread into mold!
>Fear my awesome powers!
Fiddle-faddle. You've just used the natural laws of spontaneous generation to form life from nonliving matter. It is as trivial as falling off a bicycle; such things no longer impress a jaded scientist such as myself.
For the porn, I mean. For some reason most of the spam I get is for mortgages and drugs. No porn unless you count drugs to enlarge my "pen1$".
So come on! I want porn! I'll even pretend to be a little kid from Michigan if it makes the spammers happy!
... does that mean that anyone caught defeating it is a "professional" pirate? Imagine in court:
"Your honor, we have measures in place to defeat the casual pirate, the regular joe who copies the occasional CD. The only people who can defeat these measures are intelligent and corrupt individuals who seek to destroy the music industry for their own gain. Since the defendant has successfully broken our protection, he is therefore a professional pirate! This is why we are seeking ten million dollars in damages, rather than our usual ten thousand. We must send a strong message to those who would steal from the wallets of hardworking sound booth technicians and CD press workers to pad their own bank accounts."
Man, doing tech support for Satanists sucks.
Dunno. How many people put on Superman capes and jumped off the roof?
... because I'm too lazy to write up an actual opinion.
"The need to be observed and understood was once satisfied by God. Now we can implement the same functionality with data-mining algorithms."
- the Morpheus AI, "Deus Ex"