I've been amazed that the reaction that most of the media has taken to this story. My local news station presented the story as if the very concept of warm-blooded dinosaurs was a previously unconsidered option.
(Yes, I'm fully aware that this doesn't settle the question and, yes, I know that there was the warm-blooded backlash a few years ago, and a new push for the cold-blooded theory.)
Still, you'd think that they'd mention that this isn't any huge surprise, as exiciting as this discovery is.
* Keep a series of design templates. In it, have tokens for things (ie, $title, $header, $copyright, etc) that are pulled from a DB. (Or include files, or whatever.) * Pass a language variable (lang=fr, lang=en-us, etc.) in the URL. * Use this language URL when parsing the $title and $header tokens in your design templates. * The content, of course, is stored in language-specific files or DB entries. You could use the W3C language standards (Apache respects these) and store 'em in files, or whatever.
OK, so I must be on a bitching bent today, but I've got to vent about this off-topic annoyance. (I'm posting at 1 instead of 2...that's an acknowledgement that I have a problem, at least, right?)
SecurityFocus's Linux section has fonts that are so small as to be completely unreadable on my Mac. Worse yet, they defined these teeny (sub SIZE=1 in HTML) fonts using CSS. Fonts that are defined in CSS can't be changed via prefs in IE or NS, for no good reason.
Now, I'm not some old fuddy-duddy. I like size 1 Georgia and Geneva just as much as the next guy, if not more so. I just wish people would look at their site in a few different browsers. I bet it's got really great info, too. I just can't see it!
I'll go home and see how it looks in M14 on X; maybe it's a bit more legible. I certainly hope so.
"PHP is a server-side, cross-platform, HTML embedded scripting language. If you are completely new to PHP and want to get some idea of how it works, have a look at the Introductory Tutorial. Once you get beyond that have a look at the example archive sites and some of the other resources available in the Links section."
Make no mistake, the "artists" are in for the money.
Oh, of course they are. Hell, it's a business, just a little more touchy-feely than most. But artists are learning to exploit alternative channels of income such as t-shirts, videos, bumper stickers, concert ticket sales, etc. The music has become a freebie.
It reminds me of the model that the Internet appliance industry is limping towards (like Sega with Dreamcast) -- give away the method of access and charge for the service.
To so many artists (TMBG), their relationship with their label is like that of an indentured servant and their master. Though the servant is grateful for what they receive, the indignities of day-to-day living could never make up for it.
To artists that have such awful contracts, each time that a song of theirs is transferred via Napster must feel like a small victory, a mini-uprising. Naturally, the artist can't cheer this on, nor can they even really acknowledge it. It's a rare gem like Chuck D that is willing to cheer on the revolution.
Just so you know, your sig is pretty useless. I already know that you, Waldo, posted your post. I know your e-mail address is waldo@waldo.net and that your homepage is at http://www.waldo.net. I know that you're a ``21-year-old geek. Owner of Munk & Phyber, lover of Macs and Linux, resident of Charlottesville.'' Basically, my point is that your sig is telling me nothing I don't know. Tagging your posts with -Waldo is a waste of everybody's bandwidth. For every post of yours I read, I have to download an additional 14 bytes (the HTML is <BR>-Waldo<BR> = 14 bytes) that are pretty superfluous and less informative than the info/. already gives me. If everybody trimmed their sigs of the useless crap,/. could be a bit faster. Granted, not much, but every little bit helps.
You repeated yourself several times in this post. The text of your message was 839 bytes. I've written "-Waldo" at the end of perhaps 10 messages. (It's not a.sig.) That means that I've wasted 140 bytes. You just wasted about 400. (Though some might say that you wasted 839 bytes.)
I write my signature at the bottom of my snail-mail, but it's on the envelope. I write my name at the end of my e-mail, but it's in the header. The world is full of redundancy. The world is full of redudancy. (Doh! That's 31 bytes!)
It seems to me that source code to viruses and other less-than-savoury speech should be just as protected as people that say things that we don't like. However, we have laws in place to prevent people from actually using those viruses. And we have anti-piracy laws (and open-source!) to take care of software cracks.
Speech is protected, as it should be. What you do with it is what counts.
You know how sometimes you post (Yeah, you. We all do it.) just because you know what you're saying is going to be moderated way up? You know a post about how much you love Linux and hate Microsoft?
Looks to me like Katz is karma-whoring. Ain't no point in preaching to the choir.
So, these guys want kids to provide all kinds of information about themselves, such as name, state, grade, age, sex, and some little things. Of course, this is targeted at school children -- minors.
Privacy Policy
Pinkerton Services Group has created this "Privacy Statement" to demonstrate our firm commitment to privacy. This statement outlines our information gathering and sharing practices for this website.
That's it. That's their privacy statement. Under COPPA, this will be illegal. COPPA demands that websites get a parent's permission in order to collect data from children 12 and under. COPPA goes into effect April 1st, if I recall correctly.
I won't tell Pinkerton if you don't. But I *will* report them.
Nokia 6162 Excellent phone. Dual-mode TDMA and AMPS. (SunCom, perhaps the worst provider ever, tried to convince me that it was tri-mode: "PCS, TDMA, and cellular." No amount of arguing would convince them that there's no such thing as PCS.) It's small, durable, and easy-to-use. Good OS that's easy to hack. (Type in *3001#12345#). I abused it pretty badly, and it held up really nicely. It was a bit big for me, though most would consider it to be small. The battery life was really good, and I very seldom had trouble with low battery life. It holds 200 names and numbers, and the flip cover on the 6162 is really nice. (The junior versions, the 6160 and the 5160, are good, too. But the 6162 is worth it, just for the keypad cover.) It's got a million stupid rings and two vaguely reasonable ones. It's embarassing having other hear some of the lame little tunes that chirp out of this phone.
Sony D-Wave Zuma I love this phone. It long held the title of Smallest CDMA Phone. (I think the Nokia 8860 or the Motorola StarTac gets that title now.) It's just right in size -- I can sit down with it in my jeans pocket, and not have to adjust my pants. The signal isn't as good as the Nokia, largely due to its smaller size. It's a single-mode phone, though having CDMA instead of TDMA is great. This holds 99 numbers, and spares you from the games and other weird shit in the Nokia. I'm won over by this phone's cuteness, unusual look, and solid OS. (The jog dial is great, too.) The only downside is that the mic arm tends to get wobby and need to be replaced every 6 months or so. Gotta love that warranty. It's got just a few rings that are perfect for reasonable human beings that aren't interested in hearing the 1812 Overture when somebody calls. For those of you that need AMPS and CDMA, give it a few weeks and the dual-mode Zuma will be released.
I would have e-mailed this reply, but you don't supply your address on Slashdot. I just want to thank you for being a reasonable and intelligent human being. You could have flamed me silly after my initial post, but didn't, and I think I ended up learning quite a bit from you.
To tell me that you are always in favor of them when they oppose you is a total abdication and abnegation of your own reason.
I want to start off by saying that I agree with most everything that you said. Anytime that I over-simplify something, I open myself up to criticism. But I hope that this one response will clear things up a bit.
Remember when the ACLU defended the KKK a few years back? I think that the KKK wanted to hold a parade or something. Anyhow, the ACLU backed them. (And the lawyer that the provided was black.:) The KKK got to march.
Remember the ACLU case against a town, because they were plowing the town church's parking lot? The town, if I recall correctly, had to agree to stop helping people get to church on snowy Sunday mornings.
Do I feel that the ACLU behaved in a manner that I would have? Hell no. The KKK can go bugger themselves, and I don't think that there's anything wrong with plowing a church's parking lot, if that's where 1/2 the town goes the morning that it snows.
But I believe that the ACLU *ought* to pursue cases like this, and I'm extremely thankful that they do. I do not agree with their positions on a moral level. But I aboslutely support their right to do this, and I think that the ACLU has single-handledly reshaped the manner in which our country applies our Constitution to every day life.
Think Palmer raids, Scopes monkey trial, James Joyce's "Ulysses," Japanese concentration camps and Brown v. Board of Education. The ACLU was part of all of those. Not because they were trendy causes, or because you and I would support them. But because people in a morally unpopular position needed legal defense.
I don't think that it's a matter of blind support. I think that the vision is very clear. As long as the ACLU continues to support cases that assist in refining our interpretations of the US Constitution, no matter what those interpretations may end up looking like, they will remain an important organisation that I feel it essential that we all support.
We may not always like their positions on a gut level. But can't we like them on a patriotic one?
I don't understand how any reasonable American that supports constitutional rights could ever be opposed to the ACLU. They support constitutional rights, fairly, every time. Even when they do something that I don't like, which is a good chunk of the time, I'm entirely in favour of it.
The way I figure it, either you're a supporter of the ACLU, or you're opposed to portions of the US constitution.
I got my restraining order in the second wave of 'em, which hit Sunday. So I took the content off of my site, though I did not take the site down. I'm using it to distribute information about the case until I'm assured by an attorney that I can put the site back up, as I fully anticipate will occur.
I guess the tough & manly thing to do would be to leave the program up. But I just don't have the resources to handle a lawsuit, or to be found in contempt of court for refusing to follow the orders of what must be the most poorly-applied subpoena that I've ever seen.
I think that web sites against censorware should find a way to detect a censorware product and display a banner, instead of the requested page, indicating that the site does not support censorware and the website can not be viewed if you're using a censorware filter. Then perhaps parents may be forced to (re)consider the product.
On one of my sites, Curfew.Org, I've done something close to this. Curfew.Org is all about how to fight youth curfews of a legal nature. 99% of the people looking at my site are from.edus or or from.k12.state.us. Of them, 25% of them are behind censorware proxies. So I put up a little message that lets them know that they're being censored.
I wrote mine in PHP. As you can see, it's grossly simple:
$remotehostname = gethostbyaddr($REMOTE_ADDR); if (ereg ("bess-proxy", $remotehostname)) { echo("You're being censored!"); }
This only works for proxies, and this is just the Bess section. You could insert this, and add other proxy names, and put a more useful message up. (I took out the full paragraph for brevity.)
Anyhow, steal this highly-advanced code and use it on your own site!
I disabled logging on my mirror. If Mattel comes knocking on my door, I can honestly say that I don't have a damned clue of how many people downloaded the program, or who, or what IP, or anything.
I recommend that everybody else running a mirror do the same.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been amazed that the reaction that most of the media has taken to this story. My local news station presented the story as if the very concept of warm-blooded dinosaurs was a previously unconsidered option.
(Yes, I'm fully aware that this doesn't settle the question and, yes, I know that there was the warm-blooded backlash a few years ago, and a new push for the cold-blooded theory.)
Still, you'd think that they'd mention that this isn't any huge surprise, as exiciting as this discovery is.
-Waldo
Something like this, I guess:
* Keep a series of design templates. In it, have tokens for things (ie, $title, $header, $copyright, etc) that are pulled from a DB. (Or include files, or whatever.)
* Pass a language variable (lang=fr, lang=en-us, etc.) in the URL.
* Use this language URL when parsing the $title and $header tokens in your design templates.
* The content, of course, is stored in language-specific files or DB entries. You could use the W3C language standards (Apache respects these) and store 'em in files, or whatever.
Poof, it's all assembled. That should do it.
-Waldo
Wow, could I really kick ass on distributed.net if I got one of these puppies? If so, I'm all over it! :)
-Waldo
OK, so I must be on a bitching bent today, but I've got to vent about this off-topic annoyance. (I'm posting at 1 instead of 2...that's an acknowledgement that I have a problem, at least, right?)
SecurityFocus's Linux section has fonts that are so small as to be completely unreadable on my Mac. Worse yet, they defined these teeny (sub SIZE=1 in HTML) fonts using CSS. Fonts that are defined in CSS can't be changed via prefs in IE or NS, for no good reason.
Now, I'm not some old fuddy-duddy. I like size 1 Georgia and Geneva just as much as the next guy, if not more so. I just wish people would look at their site in a few different browsers. I bet it's got really great info, too. I just can't see it!
I'll go home and see how it looks in M14 on X; maybe it's a bit more legible. I certainly hope so.
-Waldo
But I'm confused. What about this?
"PHP is a server-side, cross-platform, HTML embedded scripting language. If you are completely new to PHP and want to get some idea of how it works, have a look at the Introductory Tutorial. Once you get beyond that have a look at the example archive sites and some of the other resources available in the Links section."
Is this news, now, too?
Make no mistake, the "artists" are in for the money.
Oh, of course they are. Hell, it's a business, just a little more touchy-feely than most. But artists are learning to exploit alternative channels of income such as t-shirts, videos, bumper stickers, concert ticket sales, etc. The music has become a freebie.
It reminds me of the model that the Internet appliance industry is limping towards (like Sega with Dreamcast) -- give away the method of access and charge for the service.
-Waldo
To so many artists (TMBG), their relationship with their label is like that of an indentured servant and their master. Though the servant is grateful for what they receive, the indignities of day-to-day living could never make up for it.
To artists that have such awful contracts, each time that a song of theirs is transferred via Napster must feel like a small victory, a mini-uprising. Naturally, the artist can't cheer this on, nor can they even really acknowledge it. It's a rare gem like Chuck D that is willing to cheer on the revolution.
-Waldo
Just so you know, your sig is pretty useless. I already know that you, Waldo, posted your post. I know your e-mail address is waldo@waldo.net and that your homepage is at http://www.waldo.net. I know that you're a ``21-year-old geek. Owner of Munk & Phyber, lover of Macs and Linux, resident of Charlottesville.'' Basically, my point is that your sig is telling me nothing I don't know. Tagging your posts with -Waldo is a waste of everybody's bandwidth. For every post of yours I read, I have to download an additional 14 bytes (the HTML is <BR>-Waldo<BR> = 14 bytes) that are pretty superfluous and less informative than the info /. already gives me. If everybody trimmed their sigs of the useless crap, /. could be a bit faster. Granted, not much, but every little bit helps.
.sig.) That means that I've wasted 140 bytes. You just wasted about 400. (Though some might say that you wasted 839 bytes.)
:)
You repeated yourself several times in this post. The text of your message was 839 bytes. I've written "-Waldo" at the end of perhaps 10 messages. (It's not a
I write my signature at the bottom of my snail-mail, but it's on the envelope. I write my name at the end of my e-mail, but it's in the header. The world is full of redundancy. The world is full of redudancy. (Doh! That's 31 bytes!)
You must have the page for The Bandwidth Conservation Society as your home page, eh?
-Waldo
As a .WAV. Just a snippet.
Try out genigma. Runs on X, released under the GPL. Way easier than getting arrested.
-Waldo
IANAL.
It seems to me that source code to viruses and other less-than-savoury speech should be just as protected as people that say things that we don't like. However, we have laws in place to prevent people from actually using those viruses. And we have anti-piracy laws (and open-source!) to take care of software cracks.
Speech is protected, as it should be. What you do with it is what counts.
-Waldo
You know how sometimes you post (Yeah, you. We all do it.) just because you know what you're saying is going to be moderated way up? You know a post about how much you love Linux and hate Microsoft?
Looks to me like Katz is karma-whoring. Ain't no point in preaching to the choir.
-Waldo
But then read their privacy statement. It's shocking:
That's it. That's their privacy statement. Under COPPA, this will be illegal. COPPA demands that websites get a parent's permission in order to collect data from children 12 and under. COPPA goes into effect April 1st, if I recall correctly.
I won't tell Pinkerton if you don't. But I *will* report them.
-Waldo
Chances are there's a NDA on it, and chances are the NDA is in order to hide the fact that Mattel may have paid these guys off.
;)
Hey, I wanna get paid off! I really missed the boat on this one.
-Waldo
I have used half a dozen models of cellphones. My favourites are the Nokia 6162 and the Sony D-Wave Zuma CM-Z100.
Nokia 6162
Excellent phone. Dual-mode TDMA and AMPS. (SunCom, perhaps the worst provider ever, tried to convince me that it was tri-mode: "PCS, TDMA, and cellular." No amount of arguing would convince them that there's no such thing as PCS.) It's small, durable, and easy-to-use. Good OS that's easy to hack. (Type in *3001#12345#). I abused it pretty badly, and it held up really nicely. It was a bit big for me, though most would consider it to be small. The battery life was really good, and I very seldom had trouble with low battery life. It holds 200 names and numbers, and the flip cover on the 6162 is really nice. (The junior versions, the 6160 and the 5160, are good, too. But the 6162 is worth it, just for the keypad cover.) It's got a million stupid rings and two vaguely reasonable ones. It's embarassing having other hear some of the lame little tunes that chirp out of this phone.
Sony D-Wave Zuma
I love this phone. It long held the title of Smallest CDMA Phone. (I think the Nokia 8860 or the Motorola StarTac gets that title now.) It's just right in size -- I can sit down with it in my jeans pocket, and not have to adjust my pants. The signal isn't as good as the Nokia, largely due to its smaller size. It's a single-mode phone, though having CDMA instead of TDMA is great. This holds 99 numbers, and spares you from the games and other weird shit in the Nokia. I'm won over by this phone's cuteness, unusual look, and solid OS. (The jog dial is great, too.) The only downside is that the mic arm tends to get wobby and need to be replaced every 6 months or so. Gotta love that warranty. It's got just a few rings that are perfect for reasonable human beings that aren't interested in hearing the 1812 Overture when somebody calls. For those of you that need AMPS and CDMA, give it a few weeks and the dual-mode Zuma will be released.
You'd do well with either of these phones.
-Waldo
Orpheus,
I would have e-mailed this reply, but you don't supply your address on Slashdot. I just want to thank you for being a reasonable and intelligent human being. You could have flamed me silly after my initial post, but didn't, and I think I ended up learning quite a bit from you.
Thanks.
-Waldo
To tell me that you are always in favor of them when they oppose you is a total abdication and abnegation of your own reason.
:) The KKK got to march.
I want to start off by saying that I agree with most everything that you said. Anytime that I over-simplify something, I open myself up to criticism. But I hope that this one response will clear things up a bit.
Remember when the ACLU defended the KKK a few years back? I think that the KKK wanted to hold a parade or something. Anyhow, the ACLU backed them. (And the lawyer that the provided was black.
Remember the ACLU case against a town, because they were plowing the town church's parking lot? The town, if I recall correctly, had to agree to stop helping people get to church on snowy Sunday mornings.
Do I feel that the ACLU behaved in a manner that I would have? Hell no. The KKK can go bugger themselves, and I don't think that there's anything wrong with plowing a church's parking lot, if that's where 1/2 the town goes the morning that it snows.
But I believe that the ACLU *ought* to pursue cases like this, and I'm extremely thankful that they do. I do not agree with their positions on a moral level. But I aboslutely support their right to do this, and I think that the ACLU has single-handledly reshaped the manner in which our country applies our Constitution to every day life.
Think Palmer raids, Scopes monkey trial, James Joyce's "Ulysses," Japanese concentration camps and Brown v. Board of Education. The ACLU was part of all of those. Not because they were trendy causes, or because you and I would support them. But because people in a morally unpopular position needed legal defense.
I don't think that it's a matter of blind support. I think that the vision is very clear. As long as the ACLU continues to support cases that assist in refining our interpretations of the US Constitution, no matter what those interpretations may end up looking like, they will remain an important organisation that I feel it essential that we all support.
We may not always like their positions on a gut level. But can't we like them on a patriotic one?
-Waldo
Oooh, I'll start! I'm a lousy son of a bitch opportunist whore with a no-good kernel who can't write decent C to save my life.
Damn, I hit me where it hurts.
I don't understand how any reasonable American that supports constitutional rights could ever be opposed to the ACLU. They support constitutional rights, fairly, every time. Even when they do something that I don't like, which is a good chunk of the time, I'm entirely in favour of it.
The way I figure it, either you're a supporter of the ACLU, or you're opposed to portions of the US constitution.
-Waldo
I'm maintaining a news site for the cphack situation right now at cp.waldo.net. Good way to stay updated, IMHO.
See, this post had some content. Yay, me.
-Waldo
Holy shit, my name is on the front page of Slashdot.
Yet my karma stays at 81. Quick, make like I'm Bruce Perens and make this a 5!
:)
I got my restraining order in the second wave of 'em, which hit Sunday. So I took the content off of my site, though I did not take the site down. I'm using it to distribute information about the case until I'm assured by an attorney that I can put the site back up, as I fully anticipate will occur.
I guess the tough & manly thing to do would be to leave the program up. But I just don't have the resources to handle a lawsuit, or to be found in contempt of court for refusing to follow the orders of what must be the most poorly-applied subpoena that I've ever seen.
On one of my sites, Curfew.Org, I've done something close to this. Curfew.Org is all about how to fight youth curfews of a legal nature. 99% of the people looking at my site are from
I wrote mine in PHP. As you can see, it's grossly simple:
$remotehostname = gethostbyaddr($REMOTE_ADDR);
if (ereg ("bess-proxy", $remotehostname)) {
echo("You're being censored!");
}
This only works for proxies, and this is just the Bess section. You could insert this, and add other proxy names, and put a more useful message up. (I took out the full paragraph for brevity.)
Anyhow, steal this highly-advanced code and use it on your own site!
I disabled logging on my mirror. If Mattel comes knocking on my door, I can honestly say that I don't have a damned clue of how many people downloaded the program, or who, or what IP, or anything.
I recommend that everybody else running a mirror do the same.
And at http://cp.waldo.net/.