Lets say 000.000.000.001 through 256.256.255.256 were plain IP4. Then everything is working as planned.
0.0.0.1 ? 256.256.256.256 ? I hope for the sake of the internet that you're not in control of anything more critical than desktop PCs.
Next dude's internet address is: 256.256.256.0 + 000.000.000.001
Wait... What?
It would ease adoption I think
What would ease adoption for this novel idea is getting slapped in the face with a book on IPv4. After that we will adopt a mathematical system where 8 bits can actually express 2^8+1 values. I don't even know what to think of "256.256.256.0 + 0.0.0.1" except perhaps that I want some of what you're smoking.
Have you seen it? Go watch it, even if you don't especially like anime:)
Serial Experiments Lain is a bit too much simply because it mentions hivemind a couple of times. It's a great show, but just watching it for the few references it makes to it does not warrant having to sit through the slow pacing and nearly 6 hours of TV. I'd not even watch it if I especially liked anime.
how a housefly will gladly buzz around inside a running microwave oven as the fly is much smaller than the wavelength of the RF?
From experience I can tell you that flies do not buzz around inside running microwave ovens for long, and rest assured that the end product smells awful.
You've obviously never used tinydns/djbdns. It just works. It serves dns records, and it does that job well, and it's very secure. It doesn't have the poor code quality and 50 gazillion other features that have made Bind the, well, security nightmare that it has been.
I've used djbdns for 2 years serving 4000+ internet domains, caching nameservers on lans, and all that fun stuff that makes DNS so "intresting". Tinydns is a great piece of software if you know what you're doing, but for someone with little or no experience with DNS there is too little proper introduction documentation. Zone transfers between master and slave servers usually have hacky setups as novice admins do really stupid things here making your machine insecure (not djbdns' fault). Google for a couple of tinydns examples and you're bound to hit one that has a major security flaw in it in the first 10 hits.
Bind has the advantage of being mentioned in nearly any book on DNS, used in example configurations, and usually doesn't mean you're stuck with an unreadable log file (unless you know the tools), an obscure startup mechanism (unless you've invested time to get acquainted with the tools), and a syntax for setting records that no tools except DJBs use.
Again, djbdns is a good software package, and I can't really complain about it since it worked so well for me in the past, but I do wish it was a little less obscure in aforementioned areas so I didn't need a perl script to convert my dates in my logfile into a readable format, or need to start thinking differently when adding records.
Again, it's a great tool, if you have reasons enough to stay away from bind.
It's not even 9AM and I have already filled my bullshit quota for the day. The concept itself is dubious, but this statement in particular is ludicrous.
May I suggest you don't open your e-mail and refrain from answering the phone for today? I usually fill up my bullshit quota with those two media alone. Slashdot is just the icing on the cake.;)
Well here in Japan I pay around $45 a month for a 50M/s connection
That's what I pay for 10Mb/s and that's the fastest I can get for that price. Most ISPs here just have a maximum of 3.4Mb/s, and yes, all of them impose limits of 10GB/month:-(. Well, that's it, I'm moving to Japan. If I could only master that crazy language:-(
You'll change that opinion once you've had the following experiences:
an experienced admin asking you how you get/bin back because a shell script did something unexpected
2 hours of driving through rush hour to a colocation room because someone accidentally firewalled himself (and the rest of the internet) out and forgot to hook up the console port when installing the machine in the rack
the question "Do we keep backups of the fileserver?" pops up after someone starts cleaning up
a programmer claims kmail ate all his mail
someone forgets to double-check what terminal they typed "shutdown -h now", taking down the webserver for a webdesign company hosting 50+ of their customers
someone claiming to have been a unix admin for 20 years reboots a machine with telinit, but chooses the wrong runlevel an simply halts it
2 otherwise intelligent linux admins begin a real life flamewar over debian vs redhat during a strategy meeting, wasting an entire afternoon of everyone's time and ending the meeting with no reasonable conclusion (mind you, the whole discussion started with a discussion on package management and deployment of custom built software)
6 linux programmers in a room arguing about the style of commenting (aka. do we put an asterisk on each line or not? does it have one space in front of it or not?) ending in someone yelling "FFS, it's a single character in a comment and we've been discussing it for 2 hours now"
someone does "chmod -R 777 / some/path/here" (note the unintentional space, lord knows how it got there), followed by a loud howl and the sound of crying
a long time linux programmer is unable to use most of the software on her linux machine, yet loudly proclaims that linux that her machine at home with linux distro of her choice has no such problem, however the tool she's having problems with is automake which is functioning correctly
After experiences like these, you simply stop trusting what people tell you. In all fairness to the people involved, most of them were under a great deal of stress most of the time, and nobody is perfect. I've even found myself skimming through a config file overlooking a glaring typo and uttering the words "This should work, why doesn't it", and I've also come to the wrong conclusion sometimes, and I have narrowly escaped accidentally shutting down the wrong machine two or three times. However, I've learned to double check what I've typed on the command line if it might do some real harm (eg. commands like rm should never be used without rereading and shellscripts containing rm should always be checked for the common pitfalls).
I trust users less than the software they're using most of the time, which I guess is a pretty sad thing (although it often saves me time).
I suggest Google block Flixters IPs from logging in to Gmail. That should keep away some of this spam. In general, preventing a single IP from logging in to a lot of accounts sounds like a decent security measure.
Your idea will fail because:
a specific blocked IP is easy to circumvent if you have an entire range at your disposal
a blocked range can always use a proxy (money buys a good proxy, and if you really wanted to I'm sure that some sites ending in.ru will provide you with daily updated lists for free) until they block that proxy
most people have 1 computer used by several members of the family at home, so blocking multiple logins from one IP is generally a bad idea unless you want your users to switch to the competition
most people with multiple computers (homes and businesses) have NAT, meaning that on the internet all connections from that particular home/business look like they are coming from one computer
The problem really isn't google's concern. Their users should be more careful with whom they give their data to. It's like giving someone on the phone your credit card info because he said you might have won the credit-card-lottery. The best thing google can do is inform their users, but the truth is that they really don't need to do that.
What are those rumors about Google who would be closing their search API ? Are we talking about the boxes we can put on our sites to make a search in Google ?
No, this is about the SOAP API being replaced by a less flexible AJAX API. Never used either of them to be honest, but that's because I don't have any real need for them. When it comes to the content of my own websites (or rather my customers websites), I'd much rather prefer relying on my own database than an index google made.
If only someone would invent a lawnmower that could be driven remotely via the net...
Disguise it as a game, put it on the web in a flashvideo, call it LAWNMOWER EXXXTREME or something with lots of X'es. Kids love X'es. Market it on popular websites kids these days visit.
Rules of the game:
you're not allowed to leave the lawn, or you insta-lose
if you finish under 10 minutes you get the bonus level "Backyard Wilderness Lawnmowing Extravaganza"
if you manage to mow down the neighbours cat who keeps pooping on the doorstep you get bonuspoints
He then put a mark on his clipboard and I haven't heard from the TV licencing dogs since.
We used to have those here. The tax was abolished because of all the people scamming their way through a loophole. Now the tax has been replaced by two related taxes that don't require an inspector.
Hahahaha... Something is streamed to your computer (an flv file, which vlc supports these days), you can easily grab the location of the flv, and therefor you can easily download low quality crappy youtube uploads if you really want to. Google "download youtube" before making such bold and incorrect statements.
I mean... wow... That's the first thing I did when I discovered youtube: find out how to download the content.
Then, it will get more.NET developers too look a other ways of doing things.
To be honest, I doubt that. I have this feeling this'll make linux more accessible for.NET developers, but the developer will only use it for testing his application while still remaining on his windows machine. There's a guy who's being paid to make VB.NET software, he's not going to look at ruby/python/perl/C#/C++. The fact that he's using VB means that:
he doesn't know any of these languages, or prefers VB over them
he's been told from someone above him in the corporate foodchain to use VB
cross platform portability is not his concern
Don't get me wrong, I think this is positive in a "Oh that's neat" kind of way, but I think we're a long way from bringing all the.NET developers into the linux flock, and a very long way from having them (and their managers) look at other ways of doing things.
Most of the people I talk to who object to CF lights and how they "look funny", don't have a single one in their house.
There's a reason for that, we threw'm all out. Last year the local government gave us a coupon for 3 CFLs, so I thought "Hell, why not.". Into the local supermarket, buy 3 different types so that if you accidentally buy a crappy one you can at least try the other two.
The first one I tried stayed in for about a day. The light was a horrible flickering way too bright for evening that reminded me of the first place I ever worked where I went home everyday with a headache. The second day I got home, turned on the light, turned it off again to replace the bulb and get that annoying thing into the bathroom (where we have one tube, and an incandescent (which hangs directly above the mirror)). When I put the CFL in there, I immediatly noticed one thing: how pale I looked in the mirror. You might say "Get out more", but that's not really the problem. The light is still in there, but hardly sees any use.
The second light I tried didn't have the "office flicker" but again was way too bright and cold. I don't like my home to feel like my office in the evening. Home is a place I want to be comfortable, be able to have a nice and cosy atmosphere when I have people over. After about a week I migrated that lightbulb from the living room to the kitchen, as I don't spend nearly as much time in the kitching as I do in the living room.
The third light gave a yellowish tint. Not quite like an incandescent, but good enough for me. The lightbulb lasted 14 days. The one in the kitchen was next to die after about 4 weeks. And finally, the "office light" in the bathroom is still doing it's merry business flickering giving me an annoyed feeling whenever I'm in there. (So yes, I haven't thrown 'm all out yet)
So, I've discussed this with some friends and coworkers and some have had similar experiences, while others had far better experiences. People have given me explanations on power fluctuations causing these bulbs to fail faster, others have gone so far as accusing my karma. Truth be told, those bulbs are more expensive, and regular bulbs last somewhere between 3 months and 3 years at home (depending on how much they're used). So, explain to me again:
Why would I buy lightbulbs that make me feel uncomfortable at home?
Why would I buy lightbulbs that are more expensive in the short run?
Why would I buy lightbulbs that are much more expensive in the long run because of a shorter lifespan?
The powersavings I made, I have paid in tenfold on lightbulbs. The environmental impact in my case was more negative (2 bulbs in a single months time ending up in the container park), compared to one or two every 3 months. Hey, I'm all for the environment, but I'm also for my comfort and wallet. In this case the latter two win.
1. Create a honeypot that doesn't look like a honeypot.
2. Fire off press releases complaining about how intelligent and crafty those 1337 Chinese Hackers are.
3. Watch and learn.
Personally, I'd go with this as the "truth" behind the story. However...
I seriously doubt that valuable classified information is within reach of internet connected machines.
Never underestimate the power of stupidity. It's happened in the past, and history has a tendency of repeating itself.
Visa and other major credit card providers will generally charge back the vendor in cases like this, as it is essentially fraud.
This is true. After you receive your monthly invoice from VISA (or sooner if you use online banking), you simply have to pick up the phone and report a fraudulent charge. VISA will then "investigate" and chargeback Amazon.
However, I don't know how it is in the US, but here any company is free to not accept certain credit cards even if they are valid.
They can't charge your card without your authorization, right? RIGHT?!
Technically they can. They have your card data, so it's easy to do so. Legally, depends on the country. Some countries require companies that offer automatic rebilling (eg. porn, domainnames, etc) to have the user confirm every rebilling operation. Other countries don't have such laws.
More to the point is that most countries have laws that say that the price a good is advertised at is the price it must be sold at. If someone puts a pricetag on a car saying $10, you're not allowed during or after the sale to add a couple of zeros unless you're selling something extra or the customer agrees to a change or terms.
Also, where I live (Belgium), any shop offering a discount under the terms of "as long as supply lasts", must provide an adequate supply of items to meet the demand of a certain minimum period. The minimum period is determined legally on the type of good. This law was introduced because a lot of stores advertised very cheap items to lure customers, but having only a very limited supply of items (eg. 10 items if 3000 customers showed up). If they cannot supply the product within reasonable amounts, they must supply customers with a similar product for equal price within a certain amount of time (although the customer is not bound to purchasing the replacement item). Most people are however unaware of this and don't file a complaint. There are ways around this law however, by stating that possible errors in advertising lie at fault with the printcompany (or webdesigner), which means that nearly everyone prints an extra line of fine print these days and things are back the way they were before in most cases.
I had a look at Second Life recently and I think that it (and the systems which will come after it) will appeal to a much broader market than games like Warcraft.
Second life is essentially a chatclient to spend real money on virtual goods (or for the few who actually build stuff make real money on virtual goods).
The problem with second life is that for many people there is no reason to "play" it. There is no real objective to the game, eg. you don't get to slay dragons and rescue the princess, you don't get the rarest of rarest of items that increases your stats so you can brag in your guild about your latest armor or sword, you don't have that rare drop to fit on your brand new spaceship you use to pirate.
Many people play MMOs in a really competetive fashion, or for the challenge, or because they're addictive. I don't really see any of these qualities in second life. It's basicly a market of virtual goods, and they're making a lot of noise because they're selling baked air, everyone knows it, and appareantly everyone
The broader market? I dunno, I've met a lot of different people in WoW. Ranging from the immature adolescent ("lolol i'm so l33t") to the student with time to waste ("I raid every evening, have calculated the best uber stats for my character, troll forums, and somehow have to get a passing grade this year") to the adult with spare time ("My kids play this game, and this is a great way of keeping an eye on their online activities, and it's fun too" "I'm single and bored on weekday evenings" "My wife has another headache"). I think that WoW and Second Life have all of these groups as well, but that the WoW player is in it for the gameplay and the Second Life player is in it for the chat.
All I could think reading this article is I wish people devoted this kind of energy, passion, and dedication to their "Real Lives" (TM). The world would be a much better place...
That time that most people spend wasting cycles in front of the television is the time these people use to do something they enjoy. Whatever time and energy these people devote to a game is their own business.
I mean, these guys quote nuances in the rules (law), expect the developers (gov.) to abide by the law, and strive to make people accountable for their actions. The guy who did it actually took responsibility for what he did!
Everyone in Eve knows the EULA, because at some point everyone has been scammed ingame. CCP doesn't hold your hand in case something happens, and in the fine print of the EULA it says "A fool and his money are easily parted" (although not literally). The developers as players are not above the law. If developers were above the law, corporations that had developers in them would have an "I WIN"-button. The guy who cheated didn't even get the usual punishment from CCP (which is being fired). So yes, some are still screaming for his head.
The problem with real world analogies in this case is that if the players are upset, they stop paying and wave the game a goodbye. In real life you can't flip off the government and stop paying taxes, although some people try. In fact, in some places, pointing out the fact that the government is doing something wrong can end you up in serious problems. Getting your account banned for pointing out developer misconduct is one thing, finding yourself in a jailcell with no rights for pointing out government misconduct is another.
Seriously, anyone doing something nasty on the net is using a proxy, either one from the lists, tor or another hacked machine. Publishing these IP addresses is complete rubbish. It'll point to some machine on the net along a chain of connections.
People who insist on sticking to the fucking rules are the number one problem facing today's society, methinks.
Way to go against the machine! Fight the power of the slashdot tag system FAQ, and become a legendary internet hero/freedomfighter. Free yourself from this evil oppressor, and liberate your fellow slashdot (ab)users from these bonds.
Literally, it makes something like "all blacks are lazy" - itself a singularly racist and small-minded insult - little more than a mildly critical observation. Yet it is frequently bandied about as nigh-on "common sense".
The problem is that we've all been confronted with the stereotype far too often in our lives. I've had some teachers that were basicly going through the motions with their brain off, deferring any questions. Hell, I've even had a teacher (not a professor) scolding me once for passing by reference instead of by value, saying that I shouldn't use advanced things I knew nothing about (oh how wrong she was).
I've had some very good teachers as well, mind you. People that were exceptionally talented in what they taught, or exceptionally enthousiastic (the kind of teacher that is able to motivate nearly an entire class simply by his enthousiasm). I've had an english teacher whom inspired some of my class to actually get intrested in literature because he was so passionate about it, a math teacher that would hint towards what kind of "neat things" you could do thanks to the theoretical proof he'd just shown, and a history teacher whom encouraged you in keeping up with current events and finding the cause of political problems today because of decisions made 10 or 20 years ago.
But I've seen more than my fair share of 50-something alcoholic "damn, you guys actually showed up" types, "I've given this lecture exactly the same way for 15 years now, I hope retirement is near soon"-types and finally "I'll just read my textbook aloud, defer any questions, and leave you none the wiser"-types.
I actually had one teacher who gave the same class for 3 different "grades" (don't know how to translate that one properly, I mean each year when you advance from Cheese Appreciation 101 to 102 etc), and he would teach the same damn thing for 3 whole years. He'd go on about sorting algorithms, checksums, and he just loved referring to encoding (not encrypting) as a way to secure your data. Not showing up in his class meant failing, so by the start of the 3rd course you'd be able to predict what he was going to talk about. The problems with people like this is that they've usually been teaching there for so long and are so close to retirement that it costs a school more to fire them, than to let them go on 'till retirement.
It's these kind of people that fit the "those who can, do..." stereotype, and sadly they're the ones you'll asociate with the job "teacher" lateron in life. I guess the only reward a good teacher gets is the knowledge that he's actually taught people something, or motivated them to take a certain careerpath.
Slashdot Mirror
0.0.0.1 ? 256.256.256.256 ? I hope for the sake of the internet that you're not in control of anything more critical than desktop PCs.
Wait... What?
What would ease adoption for this novel idea is getting slapped in the face with a book on IPv4. After that we will adopt a mathematical system where 8 bits can actually express 2^8+1 values. I don't even know what to think of "256.256.256.0 + 0.0.0.1" except perhaps that I want some of what you're smoking.
That's why in Hunt for Red October, Sean Connery says "ping -c 1 sub.navy.mil" (or simply "One ping only")
That joke worked so well in my head :-(
Oh, I tried that once, they fired me because I thought I'd found the correct socket for the UTP cable. Also, people don't speak IPv4 :-(
Serial Experiments Lain is a bit too much simply because it mentions hivemind a couple of times. It's a great show, but just watching it for the few references it makes to it does not warrant having to sit through the slow pacing and nearly 6 hours of TV. I'd not even watch it if I especially liked anime.
From experience I can tell you that flies do not buzz around inside running microwave ovens for long, and rest assured that the end product smells awful.
For what it's worth, it didn't suffer long
I've used djbdns for 2 years serving 4000+ internet domains, caching nameservers on lans, and all that fun stuff that makes DNS so "intresting". Tinydns is a great piece of software if you know what you're doing, but for someone with little or no experience with DNS there is too little proper introduction documentation. Zone transfers between master and slave servers usually have hacky setups as novice admins do really stupid things here making your machine insecure (not djbdns' fault). Google for a couple of tinydns examples and you're bound to hit one that has a major security flaw in it in the first 10 hits.
Bind has the advantage of being mentioned in nearly any book on DNS, used in example configurations, and usually doesn't mean you're stuck with an unreadable log file (unless you know the tools), an obscure startup mechanism (unless you've invested time to get acquainted with the tools), and a syntax for setting records that no tools except DJBs use.
Again, djbdns is a good software package, and I can't really complain about it since it worked so well for me in the past, but I do wish it was a little less obscure in aforementioned areas so I didn't need a perl script to convert my dates in my logfile into a readable format, or need to start thinking differently when adding records.
Again, it's a great tool, if you have reasons enough to stay away from bind.
Enjoy your viiv, fanboy :)
May I suggest you don't open your e-mail and refrain from answering the phone for today? I usually fill up my bullshit quota with those two media alone. Slashdot is just the icing on the cake. ;)
That's what I pay for 10Mb/s and that's the fastest I can get for that price. Most ISPs here just have a maximum of 3.4Mb/s, and yes, all of them impose limits of 10GB/month :-(. Well, that's it, I'm moving to Japan. If I could only master that crazy language :-(
You'll change that opinion once you've had the following experiences:
After experiences like these, you simply stop trusting what people tell you. In all fairness to the people involved, most of them were under a great deal of stress most of the time, and nobody is perfect. I've even found myself skimming through a config file overlooking a glaring typo and uttering the words "This should work, why doesn't it", and I've also come to the wrong conclusion sometimes, and I have narrowly escaped accidentally shutting down the wrong machine two or three times. However, I've learned to double check what I've typed on the command line if it might do some real harm (eg. commands like rm should never be used without rereading and shellscripts containing rm should always be checked for the common pitfalls).
I trust users less than the software they're using most of the time, which I guess is a pretty sad thing (although it often saves me time).
Your idea will fail because:
The problem really isn't google's concern. Their users should be more careful with whom they give their data to. It's like giving someone on the phone your credit card info because he said you might have won the credit-card-lottery. The best thing google can do is inform their users, but the truth is that they really don't need to do that.
No, this is about the SOAP API being replaced by a less flexible AJAX API. Never used either of them to be honest, but that's because I don't have any real need for them. When it comes to the content of my own websites (or rather my customers websites), I'd much rather prefer relying on my own database than an index google made.
Disguise it as a game, put it on the web in a flashvideo, call it LAWNMOWER EXXXTREME or something with lots of X'es. Kids love X'es. Market it on popular websites kids these days visit.
Rules of the game:
LET THE GAMES BEGIN!!!!
We used to have those here. The tax was abolished because of all the people scamming their way through a loophole. Now the tax has been replaced by two related taxes that don't require an inspector.
Hahahaha... Something is streamed to your computer (an flv file, which vlc supports these days), you can easily grab the location of the flv, and therefor you can easily download low quality crappy youtube uploads if you really want to. Google "download youtube" before making such bold and incorrect statements.
I mean... wow... That's the first thing I did when I discovered youtube: find out how to download the content.
To be honest, I doubt that. I have this feeling this'll make linux more accessible for .NET developers, but the developer will only use it for testing his application while still remaining on his windows machine. There's a guy who's being paid to make VB.NET software, he's not going to look at ruby/python/perl/C#/C++. The fact that he's using VB means that :
Don't get me wrong, I think this is positive in a "Oh that's neat" kind of way, but I think we're a long way from bringing all the .NET developers into the linux flock, and a very long way from having them (and their managers) look at other ways of doing things.
There's a reason for that, we threw'm all out. Last year the local government gave us a coupon for 3 CFLs, so I thought "Hell, why not.". Into the local supermarket, buy 3 different types so that if you accidentally buy a crappy one you can at least try the other two.
The first one I tried stayed in for about a day. The light was a horrible flickering way too bright for evening that reminded me of the first place I ever worked where I went home everyday with a headache. The second day I got home, turned on the light, turned it off again to replace the bulb and get that annoying thing into the bathroom (where we have one tube, and an incandescent (which hangs directly above the mirror)). When I put the CFL in there, I immediatly noticed one thing: how pale I looked in the mirror. You might say "Get out more", but that's not really the problem. The light is still in there, but hardly sees any use.
The second light I tried didn't have the "office flicker" but again was way too bright and cold. I don't like my home to feel like my office in the evening. Home is a place I want to be comfortable, be able to have a nice and cosy atmosphere when I have people over. After about a week I migrated that lightbulb from the living room to the kitchen, as I don't spend nearly as much time in the kitching as I do in the living room.
The third light gave a yellowish tint. Not quite like an incandescent, but good enough for me. The lightbulb lasted 14 days. The one in the kitchen was next to die after about 4 weeks. And finally, the "office light" in the bathroom is still doing it's merry business flickering giving me an annoyed feeling whenever I'm in there. (So yes, I haven't thrown 'm all out yet)
So, I've discussed this with some friends and coworkers and some have had similar experiences, while others had far better experiences. People have given me explanations on power fluctuations causing these bulbs to fail faster, others have gone so far as accusing my karma. Truth be told, those bulbs are more expensive, and regular bulbs last somewhere between 3 months and 3 years at home (depending on how much they're used). So, explain to me again:
The powersavings I made, I have paid in tenfold on lightbulbs. The environmental impact in my case was more negative (2 bulbs in a single months time ending up in the container park), compared to one or two every 3 months. Hey, I'm all for the environment, but I'm also for my comfort and wallet. In this case the latter two win.
Personally, I'd go with this as the "truth" behind the story. However...
Never underestimate the power of stupidity. It's happened in the past, and history has a tendency of repeating itself.
This is true. After you receive your monthly invoice from VISA (or sooner if you use online banking), you simply have to pick up the phone and report a fraudulent charge. VISA will then "investigate" and chargeback Amazon.
However, I don't know how it is in the US, but here any company is free to not accept certain credit cards even if they are valid.
Technically they can. They have your card data, so it's easy to do so. Legally, depends on the country. Some countries require companies that offer automatic rebilling (eg. porn, domainnames, etc) to have the user confirm every rebilling operation. Other countries don't have such laws.
More to the point is that most countries have laws that say that the price a good is advertised at is the price it must be sold at. If someone puts a pricetag on a car saying $10, you're not allowed during or after the sale to add a couple of zeros unless you're selling something extra or the customer agrees to a change or terms.
Also, where I live (Belgium), any shop offering a discount under the terms of "as long as supply lasts", must provide an adequate supply of items to meet the demand of a certain minimum period. The minimum period is determined legally on the type of good. This law was introduced because a lot of stores advertised very cheap items to lure customers, but having only a very limited supply of items (eg. 10 items if 3000 customers showed up). If they cannot supply the product within reasonable amounts, they must supply customers with a similar product for equal price within a certain amount of time (although the customer is not bound to purchasing the replacement item). Most people are however unaware of this and don't file a complaint. There are ways around this law however, by stating that possible errors in advertising lie at fault with the printcompany (or webdesigner), which means that nearly everyone prints an extra line of fine print these days and things are back the way they were before in most cases.
Second life is essentially a chatclient to spend real money on virtual goods (or for the few who actually build stuff make real money on virtual goods).
The problem with second life is that for many people there is no reason to "play" it. There is no real objective to the game, eg. you don't get to slay dragons and rescue the princess, you don't get the rarest of rarest of items that increases your stats so you can brag in your guild about your latest armor or sword, you don't have that rare drop to fit on your brand new spaceship you use to pirate.
Many people play MMOs in a really competetive fashion, or for the challenge, or because they're addictive. I don't really see any of these qualities in second life. It's basicly a market of virtual goods, and they're making a lot of noise because they're selling baked air, everyone knows it, and appareantly everyone
The broader market? I dunno, I've met a lot of different people in WoW. Ranging from the immature adolescent ("lolol i'm so l33t") to the student with time to waste ("I raid every evening, have calculated the best uber stats for my character, troll forums, and somehow have to get a passing grade this year") to the adult with spare time ("My kids play this game, and this is a great way of keeping an eye on their online activities, and it's fun too" "I'm single and bored on weekday evenings" "My wife has another headache"). I think that WoW and Second Life have all of these groups as well, but that the WoW player is in it for the gameplay and the Second Life player is in it for the chat.
That time that most people spend wasting cycles in front of the television is the time these people use to do something they enjoy. Whatever time and energy these people devote to a game is their own business.
Everyone in Eve knows the EULA, because at some point everyone has been scammed ingame. CCP doesn't hold your hand in case something happens, and in the fine print of the EULA it says "A fool and his money are easily parted" (although not literally). The developers as players are not above the law. If developers were above the law, corporations that had developers in them would have an "I WIN"-button. The guy who cheated didn't even get the usual punishment from CCP (which is being fired). So yes, some are still screaming for his head.
The problem with real world analogies in this case is that if the players are upset, they stop paying and wave the game a goodbye. In real life you can't flip off the government and stop paying taxes, although some people try. In fact, in some places, pointing out the fact that the government is doing something wrong can end you up in serious problems. Getting your account banned for pointing out developer misconduct is one thing, finding yourself in a jailcell with no rights for pointing out government misconduct is another.
*cough* PROXY *cough*
Seriously, anyone doing something nasty on the net is using a proxy, either one from the lists, tor or another hacked machine. Publishing these IP addresses is complete rubbish. It'll point to some machine on the net along a chain of connections.
Way to go against the machine! Fight the power of the slashdot tag system FAQ, and become a legendary internet hero/freedomfighter. Free yourself from this evil oppressor, and liberate your fellow slashdot (ab)users from these bonds.
Grow up
Damn, they removed it? I'll just have to edit it again.
The problem is that we've all been confronted with the stereotype far too often in our lives. I've had some teachers that were basicly going through the motions with their brain off, deferring any questions. Hell, I've even had a teacher (not a professor) scolding me once for passing by reference instead of by value, saying that I shouldn't use advanced things I knew nothing about (oh how wrong she was).
I've had some very good teachers as well, mind you. People that were exceptionally talented in what they taught, or exceptionally enthousiastic (the kind of teacher that is able to motivate nearly an entire class simply by his enthousiasm). I've had an english teacher whom inspired some of my class to actually get intrested in literature because he was so passionate about it, a math teacher that would hint towards what kind of "neat things" you could do thanks to the theoretical proof he'd just shown, and a history teacher whom encouraged you in keeping up with current events and finding the cause of political problems today because of decisions made 10 or 20 years ago.
But I've seen more than my fair share of 50-something alcoholic "damn, you guys actually showed up" types, "I've given this lecture exactly the same way for 15 years now, I hope retirement is near soon"-types and finally "I'll just read my textbook aloud, defer any questions, and leave you none the wiser"-types.
I actually had one teacher who gave the same class for 3 different "grades" (don't know how to translate that one properly, I mean each year when you advance from Cheese Appreciation 101 to 102 etc), and he would teach the same damn thing for 3 whole years. He'd go on about sorting algorithms, checksums, and he just loved referring to encoding (not encrypting) as a way to secure your data. Not showing up in his class meant failing, so by the start of the 3rd course you'd be able to predict what he was going to talk about. The problems with people like this is that they've usually been teaching there for so long and are so close to retirement that it costs a school more to fire them, than to let them go on 'till retirement.
It's these kind of people that fit the "those who can, do..." stereotype, and sadly they're the ones you'll asociate with the job "teacher" lateron in life. I guess the only reward a good teacher gets is the knowledge that he's actually taught people something, or motivated them to take a certain careerpath.