Once they have separated their Unix related business off to Unix System Laboratories, they can then rename the remainder of the SCO business holdings as well. Perhaps "Microsoft Lackey" is available...
Re:Personally, I would go one step further.
on
Game with God
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I would not be suprised to find that Christianity has been used to justify more killing than any other religion in human history - including the Aztecs. Certainly there is hordes of historical data of mass slaughters done in the name of the Christian religion.
Not that Christianity directly condones that sort of behaviour - but it has historically turned a blind eye to it on those occasions when it was not actively condoning it. For example, its a sin to kill a human being, so for the purposes of the Crusades, the Church declared that non-Christians were not actually Human beings, so there was no sin involved in killing them (similarly Women were not considered entirely human throughout most of the Middle Ages it seems). By historical accounts, the blood ran so deep in the streets of Jerusalem when the Crusaders sacked it, they had to wade through it. I believe they basically massacred the entire city population, Christians, Moslems and Jews.
Estimates of those slaughtered during the Witch persecutions in Europe number from the hundreds of thousands to millions over the course of hundreds of years.
Religious wars between Protestants and Catholics lasted decades and resulted in huge casualties, destruction of entire towns etc.
Periodically throughout most of Europe, they would decide to persecute the Jewish population and massacred them en masse. Hitler's final solution was merely a most efficient modern example of a long European tradition of killing Jews.
Thousands of natives were evidently slaughtered in the New World after they were baptized - so that they could commit no sins before dying (perhaps this is legend I don't know).
In Norway/Sweden, the local population was converted to Christianity from the old Pagan ways at the point of the sword - convert or die - and this was not uncommon elsewhere. Once Christianity gains power in a nation, it uses that power to exterminate any competing religions it seems. It certainly did so in the Roman Empire and in Europe thereafter.
Although Christianity teaches that violence is wrong, it has been perverted into a means to justify violence pretty much over its entire history. It has also served as a major tool to keep the populace subdued and subservient to their masters - and is still being used in this manner today (See the radical Religious Right).
Its no wonder that many intelligent people look at the history of Christianity and reject it. There are few if any bloodier paths through religious history.
No actually its a quote from the introduction of HG Well's "War of the Worlds" - at least the album version produced in the 70's/80's (I remember someone like Richard Burton reading it aloud at the start of the Album) - probably taken directly from the beginning of the book but I am working and don't have time to check. So blame the author of the original words, not the poster who quoted something without attributing it because he thought it would get a laugh:P
Do what we did in IT when I worked at a company a few years ago. Have a 2nd computer running Windows for use when dealing with the rest of the company. I had 2 computers - one was quite good and that was my Linux box, and one sucked bigtime and that was my Windows box for use with Outlook/Exchange. I just used a KVM to switch between them and they were all on our network in any case so moving files between them was easy enough.
The attraction to management types of the Exchange meeting and room scheduling is *massive* though. We had a perfectly working email system based on one linux box. We got assigned a new VP for IT and all he knew was Outlook/Exchange, so the company spent well into the 6 figures to get 3 top of the line servers, seats for all the MS licenses required, MS Exchange, MS Sql Server etc etc plus backup system up the yingyang (that ran under FreeBSD I think) just so that the whole company could be converted over to using this for scheduling. Now, admittedly a lot of management types don't seem to do much other than go to meetings but they were all gaga over this elaborate system. The end result of course was that they also complained about their problems with email because MS Exchange sucked far worse than Sendmail on a Linux box and was totally over the top for a company of that size. The Email db got corrupted at one point and one whole segment of the company lost their email for a few hours while we restored it. There was no way this VP would listen to the IT managers at all. He basicallly ramrodded this through then left the company shortly thereafter.
Now, if Unix/Linux had offered an equivalent software package that enabled the same sort of email scheduling and was compatible with MS Outlook at the time, we might have been able to steer things that way instead, but we could point to no equivalent non-windows based product that I can recall.
Nothing better illustrates sheer American Ignorance and Arrogance than the way you folks treat the French - because they were beaten in one war, and because they didn't agree with the US when it perpetrated another war while completely ignoring the UN. Of course when you are beaten - in Vietnam for instance - you maltreat your own soldiers when they come home because you can't live with the shame.
Throughout history the French have shown they can fight when they need to. Remember the French Foreign Legion? Napoleon?
Its no wonder other countries think that all Amercians are boorish, uncivilized and violent imperialists. You earn your bad repuation in other countries by attitudes like this, and by the foreign policy of your Government that chooses to act howsoever it wants and damn the consequences to other people. Then you wonder why people hate you...
I know not all Americans are like this, thats a stupid generalization, and as a matter of fact I have liked every American I have ever met, but you will never be friends with the world while you go about bandying this holier than thou attitude, bashing anyone who has the temerity to make up their own national minds (so much for democracy abroad eh) rather than automatically agreeing with the US on all matters (you want a world of Findlands secretly it seems), and invading other countries whenever the President is doing badly in the polls.
I mean, you buy their OS software and it has lousy security allowing thousands of viruses to easily infiltrate your computer unless you have virus protection installed. They are seemingly incapable of writing a secure version of their operating system - and their attempt at it got delayed again recently I think.
Now they are going to market a line of Anti-Virus software to help treat their buggy insecure OS.
What possible incentive will there be for Microsoft to tighten up the security on their OS? If the OS department is sucessful in making a secure version of the next windows, they wipe out the market for the Anti-virus department - and possibly end the new product line.
This is rather like a used car lot knowingly selling me a car with severe mechanical problems that they didn't appraise me of at the time of sale, then offering to fix those problems for an additional fee as soon as I have bought it. In most places that would be considered a Con Job I think...
While it may have been expensive to gather that much helium, it doesn't seem to have stopped the US Navy - they had 2 of these ships (the other was called the Akron) - and they could even launch aircraft from them.
There was a game that came out a year or two ago along these lines - obviously this is the inspiration for the game's central theme of aircraft launched from a Dirigible/Zepplin type aircraft. Interesting to see that it had some basis at least...
"As others have noted, the tower is the antenna. The output line coming from an AM transmitter is fixed directly to the tower. Usually this is not fixed at ground level to avoid killing a passerby. RF waves WILL arc and kill. Also, if you are feeling especially depressed and want to cause yourself bodily harm, walk up to a hot AM tower barefoot and grab it."
When I was in the Canadian Military I was a Radio Operator. We had a standard practice of informing the operator not to key the antenna when changing the HF antenna on the top of the truck - usually in fact the person doing so went in and physically checked the antenna was disconnected at the set end. Then you went on the roof and unscrewed the antenna and screwed in the new one. If someone forgot the middle step - and the operator keyed the antenna - you would see the person touching it get lobbed a good 10-15 feet off the top of the truck by the shock and it might or might not kill them or at least severely injure them. Only saw this happen once, and the guy wasn't hurt, he got up and was ok in a few seconds - although the operator was hurt shortly thereafter:)
10,000 watts is not a good thing to run through the body...
So the first CGI-generated porn will come from somewhere in the Geek/Tech community. This is a suprise?
The technology-based porn will no doubt arise separately from the current industry - and if it works for the audience, supplant it to some degree. The cost of making the first CGI porn will be high no doubt, the but reusability of the 'actors' and sets generated will ensure sequels are cheaper no doubt:)
The biggest question is whether or not there will be an audience/market for it, and I am sure there will be in the next decade or so.
Porn has driven a lot of the innovation in some areas of the tech world (for instance online commerce and website development), it wouldn't suprise me to see it drive CGI-animation sometime soon as well.
As long as our society continues to have its truly backwards, outdated, and narrow-minded attitudes towards anything sexual, there will be a large pornography market and huge demand from those who do not share those viewpoints at least in privacy.
Yep, you Americans are currently blessed with the best president money can buy.
I find it interesting that apparently he has reversed the ages old US doctrine that it would never use nuclear weapons as a first strike (according to an article I read somewhere) and no one seems to be remarking on it. Unless the article was erroneous.
Each song downloaded represents a lost CD sale (to the RIAA and its ilk), therefore if I download 12 Offspring songs (off the same CD) they count it as 12 lost CD sales (who cares who downloaded what, they did it 12 times right?). Thus I should have paid $19.99 Cdn * 12 = $239.88/boggle
Either that or they use reporter math where you simply zero pad any dollar amount until it makes a number big enough to put in a headline.
Within my experience, if I download a song off the net and I like it, I usually buy the CD. If I don't like it, I delete the file. The only problem with this process is that the RIAA and its minions get all the money, not the artist who created it. I think the Music industry needs to be investigated by the same folks who currently handle organized crime - after all they already have the skills to investigate that sort of setup and the music industry is probably a more effective form of organized crime than the Mafia could ever hope to be (where the 2 don't coincide that is).
I have bought easily 10 times more CDs since I started hearing music off the net than before I did so. Perhaps I am an anomaly but I think I am less of one than most folks think...
Sadly lame folks who feel they have to cheat to be able to compete with others are everywhere. It would be one of the most attractive features of a MMORPG to know that there were no effective cheats and that when I got beaten in the game it was because the other guy was better than me, not because he was able to load up a frickin cheat program.
While it might be nice to know all the stats on items, it is not a sufficient justification for using cheat software. Ever. If the playerbase feels the game should provide more information, then you lambast the developers with requests to add it as a feature, but you don't use and encourage the development of cheat software to further that goal. You might have honorable intentions but the 10,000 folks coming after you and using the same software are simply too lame to win a game on their own, and are there for the unfair advantage it offers.
Not so relevant in EQ per se,where players are not in direct combat (unless on the Zeks I know), but very relevant to Dark Age of Camelot (and also see Camelot Herald for Statistics on the scoring and state of the game etc )- the game I play a lot at the moment - where players are regularly in direct conflict with each other. Programs such as Odin's Eye have threatened that game heavily.
Actually, some of the design seems to draw on the unique design of DAOC in some respects. DAOC was the first to introduce Realm vs Realm combat (where players belong to one culture permanently at war with 2 other cultures (Vikings, King Arthur's English, and the Celts of Ireland), and SWG evedently has a similar 3-sided conflict (Empire, Rebels and the Underworld) updated to suit a science-fiction universe. Player-vs-Player combat is hardly a new thing (UO had it) but DAOCs version of it is remarkably effective
Dark Age of Camelot (See http://www.darkageofcamelot.com for some information on the game and http://www.camelotherald.com if you want the game scores for each server and individual) was a very clever development in the world of MMORPGs and while its got its problems, its a very enjoyable game overall. A new expansion called Shrouded Isles will be out in in December. I have been playing DAOC since the day it came out and I haven't lost interest yet.
I hope that Verant/Sony learns from their experience with Everquest and develops a more rounded game. The Star Wars intellectual property is very well developed and deserves a good game. Sadlly, Verant has not been the most responsive of companies in the past.
I am looking forward to SWG immensely. It may be the game to pull me out of DAOC, but its gonna have to be a lot more than just eye-candy to do so.
I think the situation the poster was referring to was when Micro$oft offered to donate X million dollars of software as part of the settlement with the DOJ. Since they were donating this software to the educational system they were in effect offering to print up a pile of CDs cheap, and claim that they were making a donation equal to the street price of the software they donated, rather than the material cost to them (which is probably on the order of about $3/cd not $200 for Word say), AND they were give it to educational organizations and further their inroads into students computing habits.
Its like a marketing department's dream to be able to promote their products and claim they are doing a good thing by supporting education.
It's also disgusting and I don't think the DOJ went for it - but I am way out of touch on these issues.
That's odd. You would think that any Distro calling itself "Lesbian Linux" would not have "man" pages. I would think they would be called "womyn" pages or something:D
"Specify that an existing ban on the "advertisement" of any device that is used primarily for surreptitious electronic surveillance applies to online ads. The prohibition now covers only a "newspaper, magazine, handbill or other publication.""
I am very tired of those ads popping up all the time - although I don't recall seeing one recently - I used to get them all the time.
Re:When I first read the story title...
on
Mapping the Spam
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Place a note on each brick stating "This is not an unsolicited brick, according to US Statue..."
Since I haven't seen the original, nor had the opportunity to download anything, can I assume the folks at perlbox.org did this JUST so they could get free advertising for camelotnaturals.com? Seems like typical marketing BS to me...
For those of you who remember the Pagan BBS Scene (now there was a small niche lemme tell ya, probably no more than 20,000 boards in all), I have still got a lot of the text files I had on my BBS (The Cauldron 1991-1995) when it was part of PODS (The Pagan/Occult Distribution System) and Fidonet, available on Omphalos.net in the Resources Section.
I really loved the BBS days, and although the Internet is more efficient at communications than BBSes were in their day, there is not the sense of community that there used to be with a BBS. Something was lost with the demise of the BBS as a medium. Oh, I know they still exist but the average internet user will never see one in their entire lives - they are a dying element of modern communications. I am still tempted to set up one again though - perhaps a telnet bbs this time, since dialup is not feasible.
Another idea that occurred to me, is to use an.htaccess redirect to send all of this traffic to microsoft.com - its a bit nastier I suppose, but then its really their problem for doing insufficient testing of their products in the first place:)
Or is there a clever way to redirect them back to their own system? Anyone know? I am only mildly familiar with redirects...
I have been thinking about this as well as one of the places I do contract work for is getting pounded daily with Nimda and Code Red I/II attacks as well. Since the box is running Linux, the attacks don't matter but I have been wondering if there is some way that a sysadmin could take advantage of these requests to stop the attacking system.
Various people have mentioned writing a white hat virus that would shut down the attacker and all that - but in reality that just puts you in the same boat as someone attacking their system - and its therefore illegal.But if someone's computer makes an http request for a file from my server, am I responsible if what they get is not what they might expect to get?
What if I was to create a file consisting of nothing but the letter X that was, say, 1Gb in size, and leave it on my linux webserver with a name like "root.exe"? It wouldn't take all that many requests for the attacking system to run out of HD space. Granted service on my server might suck for a bit, but eventually if enough linux admins did this the target systems would simply shutdown for lack of swap space or HD space or whathaveyou.
Or perhaps I tell Apache to treat.exe files as PHP files and process them accordingly. Then I create a PHP script that sends prints nothing but Xs or random numbers in a long string back to the requesting server (with the execution time limit for PHP turned off). It would be like 5 lines of code total.
After all, its my server, so presumeably I put the file there for my own purposes, indicated in robots.txt that I dont want it indexed etc. If some other system makes a request for that file which I have in no way indicated is present on my system, isn't there fault/problem if the file is too big, or causes problems at their end?
I am sure the clever folks at/. could think of other things that could be done in this manner.
Just food for thought, and I would love to see some suggestions...
There is a report on the CBC website that Canadian Fighters have forced down two Korean aircraft in Whitehorse in the Yukon. It is believed that at least one of the jets was hijacked. It is currently surrounded by RCMP and the local Military from what I understand.
Here is the article since the site is hard to reach at the moment:
Suspect 747 escorted down in Yukon
WebPosted Tue Sep 11 15:44:33 2001
TORONTO - Schools and government offices in Whitehorse, Yukon were evacuated Tuesday as jet fighters escorted two commercial airliners to unscheduled landings, after aviation authorities suspected one of the aircraft may have been hijacked.
One of the airliners is a Korean Airlines 747, the other an unknown 747. Both landed at Whitehorse airport. The jet fighters continue to circle over Whitehorse.
Peter Novak of CBC Radio in Whitehorse told CBC News Online that aviation authorities said one of the aircraft may have been hijacked. Novak said highways in and out of town may have been closed, and a bomb squad was at the airport.
The identified Korean aircraft is believed to have been low on fuel and was redirected to Whitehorse.
Canadian transportation officials have also shut down all airports in Canada indefinitely as U.S.-bound international flights arrive on Canadian runways.
All domestic and international flights have been grounded as a precautionary measure after a series of attacks on high-profile targets in the United States.
Transportation Minister David Collenette says Canada is taking security very seriously and will be carefully monitoring the situation.
Prime Minister Jean Chretien has condemned what he called a "cowardly attack" south of the border and pledged full assistance to the U.S. He assured Canadians to remain calm, noting that the government was increasing security.
Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs has issued a phone number for anyone worried about friends or family in the New York area. Spokesperson Marie Lilkoff says Canadians can call 1-800-387-3124 for information.
U.S. flights diverted to Canada
The United States Federal Aviation Authority had earlier ordered all international flights to the United States to be diverted to Canada.
Airports throughout Atlantic Canada are beginning to receive a large influx of flights. Moncton, N.B., and St. John's, Nfld., expect up to 25 diverted planes, and CFB Goose Bay in Labrador expects close to 60 unscheduled landings.
Halifax airport says they currently have 23 planes on the ground and expect 27 more. The RCMP will search all of the passengers' luggage and they will be transported to large sports facilities in the city for the night. All the hotels in Halifax are full.
Passengers arriving in St. John's will be put up in hotels, conference centres and private homes. Many Toronto residents are also offering their homes to travellers stranded at Pearson Airport.
"All Canadian airspace has been closed other than for inbound overseas flights," said Calgary Airport Authority spokesperson Mike Cunnington.
Effects across Canada
All Canadian border traffic to New York state is limited. Border guards are on high alert and inspecting all vehicles, said Serge Charette, national president for the customs union. He says travellers with a valid reason to be in either country will be allowed through.
The Chief of Maritime staff in Halifax has ordered a lock-down and has posted guards at the gates the navy dockyards and the Shearwater air base.
The rocket-proof gates of the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa were surrounded by police cruisers and plain-clothes officers. Public Affairs officer Buck Shenkman says security will increase, but the embassy will remain open.
The Canadian Blood Services is urging people to contact their local donor branch in a cross-country effort for blood donations to ship to emergency centres in the U.S.
In Ontario, Premier Mike Harris offered his province's full support to the U.S. government, including medical support.
Many office complexes in Toronto allowed their employees to leave work as a precaution, jamming subways and the downtown train station. The CN Tower has also been shut down.
The CN tower belongs to the World Federation of Tall Towers, along with the World Trade Centre and the two work together frequently.
"Quite a few of CN Tower staff work with World Trade Center staff. There was a lot of back and forth travel in the last month. We both belong to the same industry association and this tragedy has hit us personally," commented Bud Purves, President and GM of the CN Tower.
When I see the way things are going I have to conclude that it is unlikely that MS will be punished in any way meaningful. They will probably get slapped with a fine or two that equal to the amount they spend on softdrinks in any given day, and will have a pile of restrictions on their business dealings set in place by the court - but its not going to change a damn thing. They will continue to bundle software free with their latest OS that is solely intended to put some perceived competitor out of business - even if the courts limit their freedom to "innovate" like this - and continue to expand into new markets and dominate them. Nothing the courts can do or say is going to have any effect worth mentioning. Its probably cheaper for them to pay lawyers to sit in court and fight any accusations that they have broken the law than it is for them to stop these practices.
Now that Bush has been placed in the Whitehouse by the Supreme Court, he is free to help his business friends who got him put there via their contributions. The change in the DOJ's approach to the MS case is obviously just a matter of Bush paying back his masters, in this case Microsoft.
I hope to hell I am wrong, but I don't think that the DOJ or the courts are going to have any noticeable effect on MS or its business practices.
OTOH, I think that its licensing scheme for XP is going to kill it dead in the water once IT departments get a chance to explain to management why its a bad idea to have your OS operate under a subscription system. I think MS has shot itself in both feet with this plan.
</RANT>
Yes this probably is a troll, but I am just too frustrated to care about my karma...
Doesn't the latest version of Opera support mouse gestures a la Black & White? Wouldn't this wreak havoc on any data they gather using this mouse position tracking system? I can just see hordes of Opera-using/.ers descending on the first website to employ this methodology for the sole purpose of screwing up the stats...
Slashdot Mirror
Once they have separated their Unix related business off to Unix System Laboratories, they can then rename the remainder of the SCO business holdings as well. Perhaps "Microsoft Lackey" is available...
I would not be suprised to find that Christianity has been used to justify more killing than any other religion in human history - including the Aztecs. Certainly there is hordes of historical data of mass slaughters done in the name of the Christian religion.
Not that Christianity directly condones that sort of behaviour - but it has historically turned a blind eye to it on those occasions when it was not actively condoning it. For example, its a sin to kill a human being, so for the purposes of the Crusades, the Church declared that non-Christians were not actually Human beings, so there was no sin involved in killing them (similarly Women were not considered entirely human throughout most of the Middle Ages it seems). By historical accounts, the blood ran so deep in the streets of Jerusalem when the Crusaders sacked it, they had to wade through it. I believe they basically massacred the entire city population, Christians, Moslems and Jews.
Estimates of those slaughtered during the Witch persecutions in Europe number from the hundreds of thousands to millions over the course of hundreds of years.
Religious wars between Protestants and Catholics lasted decades and resulted in huge casualties, destruction of entire towns etc.
Periodically throughout most of Europe, they would decide to persecute the Jewish population and massacred them en masse. Hitler's final solution was merely a most efficient modern example of a long European tradition of killing Jews.
Thousands of natives were evidently slaughtered in the New World after they were baptized - so that they could commit no sins before dying (perhaps this is legend I don't know).
In Norway/Sweden, the local population was converted to Christianity from the old Pagan ways at the point of the sword - convert or die - and this was not uncommon elsewhere. Once Christianity gains power in a nation, it uses that power to exterminate any competing religions it seems. It certainly did so in the Roman Empire and in Europe thereafter.
Although Christianity teaches that violence is wrong, it has been perverted into a means to justify violence pretty much over its entire history. It has also served as a major tool to keep the populace subdued and subservient to their masters - and is still being used in this manner today (See the radical Religious Right).
Its no wonder that many intelligent people look at the history of Christianity and reject it. There are few if any bloodier paths through religious history.
No actually its a quote from the introduction of HG Well's "War of the Worlds" - at least the album version produced in the 70's/80's (I remember someone like Richard Burton reading it aloud at the start of the Album) - probably taken directly from the beginning of the book but I am working and don't have time to check. So blame the author of the original words, not the poster who quoted something without attributing it because he thought it would get a laugh :P
Do what we did in IT when I worked at a company a few years ago. Have a 2nd computer running Windows for use when dealing with the rest of the company. I had 2 computers - one was quite good and that was my Linux box, and one sucked bigtime and that was my Windows box for use with Outlook/Exchange. I just used a KVM to switch between them and they were all on our network in any case so moving files between them was easy enough.
The attraction to management types of the Exchange meeting and room scheduling is *massive* though. We had a perfectly working email system based on one linux box. We got assigned a new VP for IT and all he knew was Outlook/Exchange, so the company spent well into the 6 figures to get 3 top of the line servers, seats for all the MS licenses required, MS Exchange, MS Sql Server etc etc plus backup system up the yingyang (that ran under FreeBSD I think) just so that the whole company could be converted over to using this for scheduling. Now, admittedly a lot of management types don't seem to do much other than go to meetings but they were all gaga over this elaborate system. The end result of course was that they also complained about their problems with email because MS Exchange sucked far worse than Sendmail on a Linux box and was totally over the top for a company of that size. The Email db got corrupted at one point and one whole segment of the company lost their email for a few hours while we restored it. There was no way this VP would listen to the IT managers at all. He basicallly ramrodded this through then left the company shortly thereafter.
Now, if Unix/Linux had offered an equivalent software package that enabled the same sort of email scheduling and was compatible with MS Outlook at the time, we might have been able to steer things that way instead, but we could point to no equivalent non-windows based product that I can recall.
Nothing better illustrates sheer American Ignorance and Arrogance than the way you folks treat the French - because they were beaten in one war, and because they didn't agree with the US when it perpetrated another war while completely ignoring the UN. Of course when you are beaten - in Vietnam for instance - you maltreat your own soldiers when they come home because you can't live with the shame.
Throughout history the French have shown they can fight when they need to. Remember the French Foreign Legion? Napoleon?
Its no wonder other countries think that all Amercians are boorish, uncivilized and violent imperialists. You earn your bad repuation in other countries by attitudes like this, and by the foreign policy of your Government that chooses to act howsoever it wants and damn the consequences to other people. Then you wonder why people hate you...
I know not all Americans are like this, thats a stupid generalization, and as a matter of fact I have liked every American I have ever met, but you will never be friends with the world while you go about bandying this holier than thou attitude, bashing anyone who has the temerity to make up their own national minds (so much for democracy abroad eh) rather than automatically agreeing with the US on all matters (you want a world of Findlands secretly it seems), and invading other countries whenever the President is doing badly in the polls.
I mean, you buy their OS software and it has lousy security allowing thousands of viruses to easily infiltrate your computer unless you have virus protection installed. They are seemingly incapable of writing a secure version of their operating system - and their attempt at it got delayed again recently I think.
Now they are going to market a line of Anti-Virus software to help treat their buggy insecure OS.
What possible incentive will there be for Microsoft to tighten up the security on their OS? If the OS department is sucessful in making a secure version of the next windows, they wipe out the market for the Anti-virus department - and possibly end the new product line.
This is rather like a used car lot knowingly selling me a car with severe mechanical problems that they didn't appraise me of at the time of sale, then offering to fix those problems for an additional fee as soon as I have bought it. In most places that would be considered a Con Job I think...
Your third point would seem to be directly in conflict with an article on the US Zepplin the Macon from 1933.
http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/macon.html
While it may have been expensive to gather that much helium, it doesn't seem to have stopped the US Navy - they had 2 of these ships (the other was called the Akron) - and they could even launch aircraft from them.
There was a game that came out a year or two ago along these lines - obviously this is the inspiration for the game's central theme of aircraft launched from a Dirigible/Zepplin type aircraft. Interesting to see that it had some basis at least...
"As others have noted, the tower is the antenna. The output line coming from an AM transmitter is fixed directly to the tower. Usually this is not fixed at ground level to avoid killing a passerby. RF waves WILL arc and kill. Also, if you are feeling especially depressed and want to cause yourself bodily harm, walk up to a hot AM tower barefoot and grab it."
:)
When I was in the Canadian Military I was a Radio Operator. We had a standard practice of informing the operator not to key the antenna when changing the HF antenna on the top of the truck - usually in fact the person doing so went in and physically checked the antenna was disconnected at the set end. Then you went on the roof and unscrewed the antenna and screwed in the new one. If someone forgot the middle step - and the operator keyed the antenna - you would see the person touching it get lobbed a good 10-15 feet off the top of the truck by the shock and it might or might not kill them or at least severely injure them. Only saw this happen once, and the guy wasn't hurt, he got up and was ok in a few seconds - although the operator was hurt shortly thereafter
10,000 watts is not a good thing to run through the body...
So the first CGI-generated porn will come from somewhere in the Geek/Tech community. This is a suprise?
:)
The technology-based porn will no doubt arise separately from the current industry - and if it works for the audience, supplant it to some degree. The cost of making the first CGI porn will be high no doubt, the but reusability of the 'actors' and sets generated will ensure sequels are cheaper no doubt
The biggest question is whether or not there will be an audience/market for it, and I am sure there will be in the next decade or so.
Porn has driven a lot of the innovation in some areas of the tech world (for instance online commerce and website development), it wouldn't suprise me to see it drive CGI-animation sometime soon as well.
As long as our society continues to have its truly backwards, outdated, and narrow-minded attitudes towards anything sexual, there will be a large pornography market and huge demand from those who do not share those viewpoints at least in privacy.
Yep, you Americans are currently blessed with the best president money can buy.
I find it interesting that apparently he has reversed the ages old US doctrine that it would never use nuclear weapons as a first strike (according to an article I read somewhere) and no one seems to be remarking on it. Unless the article was erroneous.
I imagine the math is pretty simple:
/boggle
Each song downloaded represents a lost CD sale (to the RIAA and its ilk), therefore if I download 12 Offspring songs (off the same CD) they count it as 12 lost CD sales (who cares who downloaded what, they did it 12 times right?). Thus I should have paid $19.99 Cdn * 12 = $239.88
Either that or they use reporter math where you simply zero pad any dollar amount until it makes a number big enough to put in a headline.
Within my experience, if I download a song off the net and I like it, I usually buy the CD. If I don't like it, I delete the file. The only problem with this process is that the RIAA and its minions get all the money, not the artist who created it. I think the Music industry needs to be investigated by the same folks who currently handle organized crime - after all they already have the skills to investigate that sort of setup and the music industry is probably a more effective form of organized crime than the Mafia could ever hope to be (where the 2 don't coincide that is).
I have bought easily 10 times more CDs since I started hearing music off the net than before I did so. Perhaps I am an anomaly but I think I am less of one than most folks think...
Phrogman
Sadly lame folks who feel they have to cheat to be able to compete with others are everywhere. It would be one of the most attractive features of a MMORPG to know that there were no effective cheats and that when I got beaten in the game it was because the other guy was better than me, not because he was able to load up a frickin cheat program.
While it might be nice to know all the stats on items, it is not a sufficient justification for using cheat software. Ever. If the playerbase feels the game should provide more information, then you lambast the developers with requests to add it as a feature, but you don't use and encourage the development of cheat software to further that goal. You might have honorable intentions but the 10,000 folks coming after you and using the same software are simply too lame to win a game on their own, and are there for the unfair advantage it offers.
Not so relevant in EQ per se,where players are not in direct combat (unless on the Zeks I know), but very relevant to Dark Age of Camelot (and also see Camelot Herald for Statistics on the scoring and state of the game etc )- the game I play a lot at the moment - where players are regularly in direct conflict with each other. Programs such as Odin's Eye have threatened that game heavily.
Phrogman
Actually, some of the design seems to draw on the unique design of DAOC in some respects. DAOC was the first to introduce Realm vs Realm combat (where players belong to one culture permanently at war with 2 other cultures (Vikings, King Arthur's English, and the Celts of Ireland), and SWG evedently has a similar 3-sided conflict (Empire, Rebels and the Underworld) updated to suit a science-fiction universe. Player-vs-Player combat is hardly a new thing (UO had it) but DAOCs version of it is remarkably effective
Dark Age of Camelot (See http://www.darkageofcamelot.com for some information on the game and http://www.camelotherald.com if you want the game scores for each server and individual) was a very clever development in the world of MMORPGs and while its got its problems, its a very enjoyable game overall. A new expansion called Shrouded Isles will be out in in December. I have been playing DAOC since the day it came out and I haven't lost interest yet.
I hope that Verant/Sony learns from their experience with Everquest and develops a more rounded game. The Star Wars intellectual property is very well developed and deserves a good game. Sadlly, Verant has not been the most responsive of companies in the past.
I am looking forward to SWG immensely. It may be the game to pull me out of DAOC, but its gonna have to be a lot more than just eye-candy to do so.
I think the situation the poster was referring to was when Micro$oft offered to donate X million dollars of software as part of the settlement with the DOJ. Since they were donating this software to the educational system they were in effect offering to print up a pile of CDs cheap, and claim that they were making a donation equal to the street price of the software they donated, rather than the material cost to them (which is probably on the order of about $3/cd not $200 for Word say), AND they were give it to educational organizations and further their inroads into students computing habits.
Its like a marketing department's dream to be able to promote their products and claim they are doing a good thing by supporting education.
It's also disgusting and I don't think the DOJ went for it - but I am way out of touch on these issues.
That's odd. You would think that any Distro calling itself "Lesbian Linux" would not have "man" pages. I would think they would be called "womyn" pages or something :D
"Specify that an existing ban on the "advertisement" of any device that is used primarily for surreptitious electronic surveillance applies to online ads. The prohibition now covers only a "newspaper, magazine, handbill or other publication.""
I am very tired of those ads popping up all the time - although I don't recall seeing one recently - I used to get them all the time.
Place a note on each brick stating "This is not an unsolicited brick, according to US Statue..."
:D
Since I haven't seen the original, nor had the opportunity to download anything, can I assume the folks at perlbox.org did this JUST so they could get free advertising for camelotnaturals.com? Seems like typical marketing BS to me...
For those of you who remember the Pagan BBS Scene (now there was a small niche lemme tell ya, probably no more than 20,000 boards in all), I have still got a lot of the text files I had on my BBS (The Cauldron 1991-1995) when it was part of PODS (The Pagan/Occult Distribution System) and Fidonet, available on Omphalos.net in the Resources Section.
I really loved the BBS days, and although the Internet is more efficient at communications than BBSes were in their day, there is not the sense of community that there used to be with a BBS. Something was lost with the demise of the BBS as a medium. Oh, I know they still exist but the average internet user will never see one in their entire lives - they are a dying element of modern communications. I am still tempted to set up one again though - perhaps a telnet bbs this time, since dialup is not feasible.
Any other PODS users or Sysops out there?
Another idea that occurred to me, is to use an .htaccess redirect to send all of this traffic to microsoft.com - its a bit nastier I suppose, but then its really their problem for doing insufficient testing of their products in the first place :)
Or is there a clever way to redirect them back to their own system? Anyone know? I am only mildly familiar with redirects...
I have been thinking about this as well as one of the places I do contract work for is getting pounded daily with Nimda and Code Red I/II attacks as well. Since the box is running Linux, the attacks don't matter but I have been wondering if there is some way that a sysadmin could take advantage of these requests to stop the attacking system.
Various people have mentioned writing a white hat virus that would shut down the attacker and all that - but in reality that just puts you in the same boat as someone attacking their system - and its therefore illegal.But if someone's computer makes an http request for a file from my server, am I responsible if what they get is not what they might expect to get?
What if I was to create a file consisting of nothing but the letter X that was, say, 1Gb in size, and leave it on my linux webserver with a name like "root.exe"? It wouldn't take all that many requests for the attacking system to run out of HD space. Granted service on my server might suck for a bit, but eventually if enough linux admins did this the target systems would simply shutdown for lack of swap space or HD space or whathaveyou.
Or perhaps I tell Apache to treat .exe files as PHP files and process them accordingly. Then I create a PHP script that sends prints nothing but Xs or random numbers in a long string back to the requesting server (with the execution time limit for PHP turned off). It would be like 5 lines of code total.
After all, its my server, so presumeably I put the file there for my own purposes, indicated in robots.txt that I dont want it indexed etc. If some other system makes a request for that file which I have in no way indicated is present on my system, isn't there fault/problem if the file is too big, or causes problems at their end?
I am sure the clever folks at /. could think of other things that could be done in this manner.
Just food for thought, and I would love to see some suggestions...
So one's a GNU nut and the other is a GUN nut you mean? Sorry, couldn't resist...
There is a report on the CBC website that Canadian Fighters have forced down two Korean aircraft in Whitehorse in the Yukon. It is believed that at least one of the jets was hijacked. It is currently surrounded by RCMP and the local Military from what I understand.
Here is the article since the site is hard to reach at the moment:
Suspect 747 escorted down in Yukon
WebPosted Tue Sep 11 15:44:33 2001
TORONTO - Schools and government offices in Whitehorse, Yukon were evacuated Tuesday as jet fighters escorted two commercial airliners to unscheduled landings, after aviation authorities suspected one of the aircraft may have been hijacked.
One of the airliners is a Korean Airlines 747, the other an unknown 747. Both landed at Whitehorse airport. The jet fighters continue to circle over Whitehorse.
Peter Novak of CBC Radio in Whitehorse told CBC News Online that aviation authorities said one of the aircraft may have been hijacked. Novak said highways in and out of town may have been closed, and a bomb squad was at the airport.
The identified Korean aircraft is believed to have been low on fuel and was redirected to Whitehorse.
Canadian transportation officials have also shut down all airports in Canada indefinitely as U.S.-bound international flights arrive on Canadian runways.
All domestic and international flights have been grounded as a precautionary measure after a series of attacks on high-profile targets in the United States.
Transportation Minister David Collenette says Canada is taking security very seriously and will be carefully monitoring the situation.
Prime Minister Jean Chretien has condemned what he called a "cowardly attack" south of the border and pledged full assistance to the U.S. He assured Canadians to remain calm, noting that the government was increasing security.
Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs has issued a phone number for anyone worried about friends or family in the New York area. Spokesperson Marie Lilkoff says Canadians can call 1-800-387-3124 for information.
U.S. flights diverted to Canada
The United States Federal Aviation Authority had earlier ordered all international flights to the United States to be diverted to Canada.
Airports throughout Atlantic Canada are beginning to receive a large influx of flights. Moncton, N.B., and St. John's, Nfld., expect up to 25 diverted planes, and CFB Goose Bay in Labrador expects close to 60 unscheduled landings.
Halifax airport says they currently have 23 planes on the ground and expect 27 more. The RCMP will search all of the passengers' luggage and they will be transported to large sports facilities in the city for the night. All the hotels in Halifax are full.
Passengers arriving in St. John's will be put up in hotels, conference centres and private homes. Many Toronto residents are also offering their homes to travellers stranded at Pearson Airport.
"All Canadian airspace has been closed other than for inbound overseas flights," said Calgary Airport Authority spokesperson Mike Cunnington.
Effects across Canada
All Canadian border traffic to New York state is limited. Border guards are on high alert and inspecting all vehicles, said Serge Charette, national president for the customs union. He says travellers with a valid reason to be in either country will be allowed through.
The Chief of Maritime staff in Halifax has ordered a lock-down and has posted guards at the gates the navy dockyards and the Shearwater air base.
The rocket-proof gates of the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa were surrounded by police cruisers and plain-clothes officers. Public Affairs officer Buck Shenkman says security will increase, but the embassy will remain open.
The Canadian Blood Services is urging people to contact their local donor branch in a cross-country effort for blood donations to ship to emergency centres in the U.S.
In Ontario, Premier Mike Harris offered his province's full support to the U.S. government, including medical support.
Many office complexes in Toronto allowed their employees to leave work as a precaution, jamming subways and the downtown train station. The CN Tower has also been shut down.
The CN tower belongs to the World Federation of Tall Towers, along with the World Trade Centre and the two work together frequently.
"Quite a few of CN Tower staff work with World Trade Center staff. There was a lot of back and forth travel in the last month. We both belong to the same industry association and this tragedy has hit us personally," commented Bud Purves, President and GM of the CN Tower.
Written by CBC News Online staff
When I see the way things are going I have to conclude that it is unlikely that MS will be punished in any way meaningful. They will probably get slapped with a fine or two that equal to the amount they spend on softdrinks in any given day, and will have a pile of restrictions on their business dealings set in place by the court - but its not going to change a damn thing. They will continue to bundle software free with their latest OS that is solely intended to put some perceived competitor out of business - even if the courts limit their freedom to "innovate" like this - and continue to expand into new markets and dominate them. Nothing the courts can do or say is going to have any effect worth mentioning. Its probably cheaper for them to pay lawyers to sit in court and fight any accusations that they have broken the law than it is for them to stop these practices.
Now that Bush has been placed in the Whitehouse by the Supreme Court, he is free to help his business friends who got him put there via their contributions. The change in the DOJ's approach to the MS case is obviously just a matter of Bush paying back his masters, in this case Microsoft.
I hope to hell I am wrong, but I don't think that the DOJ or the courts are going to have any noticeable effect on MS or its business practices.
OTOH, I think that its licensing scheme for XP is going to kill it dead in the water once IT departments get a chance to explain to management why its a bad idea to have your OS operate under a subscription system. I think MS has shot itself in both feet with this plan. </RANT>
Yes this probably is a troll, but I am just too frustrated to care about my karma...
Doesn't the latest version of Opera support mouse gestures a la Black & White? Wouldn't this wreak havoc on any data they gather using this mouse position tracking system? I can just see hordes of Opera-using /.ers descending on the first website to employ this methodology for the sole purpose of screwing up the stats...