You stupid fuck, I bet you wonder why you've never had a girlfriend...
dkscully, I apologise on behalf of this useless excuse of a/. poster; the rest of us value your input...
How is the boycott of Amazon going?
AFAIK, Amazon still has yet to show a profit, and has about a year's worth of vulture capital left. This is when the boycott will start to bite, when the free money starts running out.
Unfortunately, Amazon is still the City's (or Wall St for you septics) dotcom darling, and that will probably continue until the second round of VC funding; all the greedmongers will be creaming themselves to get in on the deal. Only if the cash runs out a second time will the time of reckoning come to pass.
I've never used Amazon for anything other than looking up the ISBN of a book, and won't until they drop their patent.
So, is there any formal "stand up and be counted" site, somewhere where I can digitally sign my name and tell Bezos where he can put his one click patent? Because until Jazzy Jeff B and the Patent Abusers can show their shareholders "this is a list of people who will never buy anything from us. We drop our patent, and they will buy things from us. Our increased customer base will offset any losses if anyone uses the one click idea.", they are potentially opening themselves up to all sorts of legal trouble from shareholders trying it on with "due diligence" lawsuits...
Absolutely.
Flamebait that this is, the poster has a point, apart from the "write it yourself" - the idea of OSS is that code can be freely shared, and reused.
I've been using Mozilla since M15 - and it's coming along great. Admittedly, it is one memory hungry bastard (but hey I've got 512MB to play with:), and it does crash every now and then. But I am running the debug version, and I try to post detailed bug reports back to the Moz devteam
Whatever you have to say about how long it has taken to write Mozilla, it is still an awesome project. OK, it can't handle secure sites very well, and I still haven't got Java to work right (JavaScript is OK though...), but that will come.
What really, really pisses me off is sites like UnOlympics which assume that everybody uses Netscape or IE. I don't have Opera or Lynx handy, so I can't check if they work, but the browser wars are hurting everybody - web developers have to encase their entire sites in switch statemens, users have differing experiences of the same sites, and what industry seems to be blind to is that it is costing them money - the only stick that they will heed... //endrant
Fair point, bit of a typo there.... Either that or my m4d optimisation 5k1ll5 got the better of me...:)
Imagine I'm not a semi literate retard who can type properly, and put a 10 in the loop control section instead of a 0... Then think about it... I'd say it would be optimised by the compiler, and my example gives the compiler a better chance of getting a top optimisation...
Interesting coding style you have there...
void main()
{
for (int i=0; i < 0; i++)
{
printf("Repeat 10 times after me: Sourcecode is text. Text may be copyrighted and trademarked, but the ideas behind them should be free!");
}
}
Would be how I'd have written it (although/. munged th indents). Anybody got an idea which is faster?
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Re:Who really needs a lesson
on
Lawsuits Suck
·
· Score: 1
Yes, I do, but I'm not talking about simple website defacement, and nor was I saying that it was a good or right thing to do.
I'm thinking proper cracking. Trawl all targeted servers, find as much confidential info, publish it, _then_ take the cracked server down. I'm not talking about a one off 5kript kiddie attack here, I'm imagining full out terrorist action. Every server they own, every website. Not a random smattering of sites, but a concerted, planned all out attack. Don't forget how many millions it cost Sun when Mitnick was prowling _one_ of their machines!
I am in no way advocating this as a reasonable course of action (which is probably why we're having this discussion in the first place; most of us nerds are too reasonable and moral to do bad things in the name of a higher purpose; shame that corporations don't feel this way), just a possibility. Note that the downside of this action is _very_ bad - jail for 5+ years does not appeal.
High profile attacks on sites will focus media attention on what's going on, get the message out to more people that they are losing their rights and freedoms via backdoor policies. And don't forget the embarassment of not being able to keep a website up on the internet, or the loss of business that may ensue for many corporates.
Aside from morality, the only flaw in what I've said is the real world cost of getting caught, and it's a biggy. Which is why in my earlier post, I quickly dismissed this line of thinking. The only way forward is the BBS.
"...ninethousandth floor, geosynchronous satellites, Debian CD's, ladies lingerie... Please mind the detritus as you step out of the elevator, and don't forget to put your space helmet on!"
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Re:Link. Not only does he save princess Zelda...
on
Lawsuits Suck
·
· Score: 1
Perhaps the first 8 bytes are reserved?
Nah, that's a Micro$lop trick - maybe CT is using SQL server?:)
I've lost count of the functions in Win32 that either take a parameter of "reserved" or a pointer to a struct which has several "Reserved for internal use" mmebers... Tried tracing them through a few times, there's some weird shit that goes through the guts of Windows...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Re:While I'm not the first to say it...
on
Lawsuits Suck
·
· Score: 1
It's Revolution Calling, BTW.
And if you're going to rip lyrics, at least drop a credit to the authors...
Queensryche, on the album "Operation Mindcrime"
If you don't have it, you should. It's one of the strongest albums in the rock genre I've ever heard.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Re:Who really needs a lesson
on
Lawsuits Suck
·
· Score: 2
And until the people who claim to care about the future of the Internet can put down their keyboards, put on suits and learn to fight like attorneys
Like it or not, the guy's right. Slowly, as corporate awareness of the internet is building, legislation and lawsuits are being drafted to fit the corporate vision of the way the Internet should be.
So what can we do?
Several courses of action can be taken:
1) Fight them on the beaches. Give lots of cash to EFF in the US, get active on www.stand.co.uk in Britain, and various other internet rights organisations. Fight them on their own ground -the courts. The trouble is, too many people are unaware of what is going on with the Internet and law - and many of those who do know what's going on don't care - a sort of "when they came for the Jews..." type argument. But faced with corporate giants with endlessly payrolled legal departments, rights organisations are left with a David vs Goliath scenario, only this time David can't afford many stones.
2) Nerd walkout days. Organise, unite, don't work for any company that you think is oppressing freedoms. Cut off their tech supply. The problem with this is us nerds still need to eat, and I don't expect any solidarity from other techs persuing lucrative options and large salaries.
3) Hacktivism - if a company is oppressing freedom on the net, then prevent them from participating. DDOS, hacks, bandwidth consumption attacks - send the message of "play nice or we won't let you play at all". The problem of this is the corporate and governmental corporate machinery is very much geared against this, and you?d probably end up in jail for a loooong time. Very bad idea.
So what does that leave? Nothing. Face it - the days of the free and easy internet are gone. There is too much money to be made on the internet, and it is perceived there can be a lot of money to be lost (like MP3.com's record payout to that record company). So the internet is going through a transition from being mostly an academic tool to be a consumer product delivery mechanism. I don't like this any more than you, but face it - we have lost. We are outgunned on all sides, and the only recourse is to fall on our swords (quit that high paying web dev job), which isn't likely.
However, the original spirit of the internet will live on. How? Back to bulletin boards. And heads will have to be kept even lower than before.
As www.ntk.net says - "they stole our revolution. Now we're stealing it back".
They tried that in Swindon, UK, a few years ago. The card was called Mondex, and all the retailers in Swindon were provided with Mondex terminals to receive payments and to "top up" the cards with extra cash.
That was four years ago, when I was in Swindon the pilot had been running for 2 years and nobody really used it. I guess that it was abandoned, 'cos I've not seen it elsewhere since... (now livinf in London)
Maybe with this newfangled internet thingy getting popular, it may be worth another go...
But not entirely like cash... It can still be traced to _you_ if Amex add the one-shot CC to your ordinary bill...
What I'd like to see is something akin to the phonecards - go into any supermarket/corner shop, hand over the moolah (in cash) and get a card worth the same amount. That's as close to untraceable cash as you'll get...
While on the job training is great, and with the right mindset and work ethic you can become a 31337 coder, there's still stuff I covered in the first year of my college degree which I still find useful.
I can't remember it in detail, but most importantly, I can remember what it is called, bang a few search terms into www.alltheweb.com and I'm on my way.
In addition to this, we were taught basic business skills - project management, letter writing, all the stuff businesses will take for granted.
Compare this with the self taught, and there is no contest.
That said, from a personal perspective - in colleges you'll meet a whole bunch of people with similar interests, who will probably remain in your life until you die. And you'll be a couple of years older and wiser, and more able to deal with those 70 hour weeks you'll be doing!!!
Lord William Rees-Mogg - not only editor of the Times at one point, but IIRC he was one of Britains Moral Guardians at one point; think he oversaw decency in telecommunications... Which, IMHO, puts him in an odd position to be commentating on the internet, which is of course full of donkey pr0n...
You mean the Reliant Robin.
A masterpiece of engineering.
Car tax (yearly tax which allegedly goes to the maintainance of the roads & motorways) in the UK is high, as is petrol. The Reliant Robin was designed with 3 wheels so it would be classed as a motorbike.
It had a tiny, tiny engine, but the bodywork was all fibreglass, so whilst it's not exactly a sports car, it wasn't totally sluggish. In fact, one managed to escape whilst being chased by a police car.
So, there we have it - a legal and car hack to reduce the TCO of owning a car.
The only downside is they were never seen as fanny magnets...
How about putting the code into html as comments, ROT13'd ?
Add a shiny click through license (protected by DMCA) that states you are a private individual...
My advice to the MPAA: Be careful who you step on, because if you step on a gorilla, he'll smash your face in.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
I'm surprised that nobody has registered their ire by organising DOS / mass cracks of MPAA affiliated sites. Sort of like hacktivists saying "we don't like what you're doing to our web, so we won't let you play on it. You've bought the courts, but this is our manor, you are just guests"
There was PimpShiz for Napster (interview was fairly recent on/.), an unnamed person DOS'ed British Telecom for their poor offerings (search http://www.theregister.co.uk)... Why is this different?
I'm not in any way advising anyone to do any of the above; just curious as to why the 2600 crowd (amongst whom I should imagine there are some _real_ 31337 d00ds) aren't doing anything. Maybe Emmanuel has more control of them than I realise with his plea to leave it to the courts.
I know there are some of you reading this who are thinking that this is an immoral (censoring their free speech and all) way of advancing the issue, but I'd look at it like this: big pocketed corporation vs a few loosely affiliated nerds. BPC can buy courts, LANs cannot. They have their tools, we have ours. It's just like David and Goliath...
Discuss...
all those RedHat 5.2 and 6.0 books out there though
Compare and contrast the UK experience on things...
When I first bought a copy of Linux (didn't have a spare T1 kicking about and 650MB is a looong wait on 56K), I had to go to about 4 shops before I found it.
Browsing the same shops last week (Tottenham Court Rd), I saw release of Corel, SuSe, RedHat and Mandrake. And where there were _no_ books before, there was a good 25% of the shelf space taken up by Linux Howto... style books, by all major publishers... Gathering momentum as we speak!
Is it possible that Transmeta haven't delivered what Toshiba wanted? IIRC, the Crusoe was supposed to be blisteringly quick and consume little power. Now it is released, it is just low power consumption processor.
Maybe Toshiba are just annoyed it didn't work out for them...
Nope, all you need is EPOC.
It's _rock_ solid, runs on the Psion. I've had my Psion for 2 years, and it has _never_ crashed. Nope, that's _never_.
Why is it that everyone is trying to push this wireless crap at us all the time? Look at the amount of cash invested into WAP over here in the UK; and how many people are using it?
Until we get _fast_ wireless protocols rolled out live, these toys will remain underused.
I _do_ have a CD burner.
I've been trying to get a Debian release to download all week.
The hoops Debian make you jump through to get a version downloaded together is the biggest problem of all...
I'm trying to do the download on my company's fast comms line, but wget doesn't like my proxy, and the documentation on using wget with a proxy server is seriously minimal.
Sorry, but _I_ wasn't impressed with Debian. ALL I WANT IS THE BLOODY ISO!!! Maybe I'll shell out the cash & buy the CD's...
OT - looking down most computer software shops in Tottenham Court Road (London, UK) this week; all of them had RedHat, lots had Suse, some had Corel and two even had Mandrake!!!
Actually, the name deefer was bestowed upon me about ten years ago, in real life!!! Whoooo! Most of my friends still refer to me as deefer.
And, no, I _do_ support anonymous posting. For stuff like "my employer...", "my hellmouth..." etc etc etc.
Not "I fancy taking cheap shots at people who're getting more attention than ME with no responsibility for what I said".
But we need new blood to keep the momentum going.
Never arrange to meet Bruce on a moonlit night in a graveyeard, and keep the crucifix and garlic to hand...:)
Slashdot Mirror
dkscully, I apologise on behalf of this useless excuse of a
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
AFAIK, Amazon still has yet to show a profit, and has about a year's worth of vulture capital left. This is when the boycott will start to bite, when the free money starts running out.
Unfortunately, Amazon is still the City's (or Wall St for you septics) dotcom darling, and that will probably continue until the second round of VC funding; all the greedmongers will be creaming themselves to get in on the deal. Only if the cash runs out a second time will the time of reckoning come to pass.
I've never used Amazon for anything other than looking up the ISBN of a book, and won't until they drop their patent. So, is there any formal "stand up and be counted" site, somewhere where I can digitally sign my name and tell Bezos where he can put his one click patent? Because until Jazzy Jeff B and the Patent Abusers can show their shareholders "this is a list of people who will never buy anything from us. We drop our patent, and they will buy things from us. Our increased customer base will offset any losses if anyone uses the one click idea.", they are potentially opening themselves up to all sorts of legal trouble from shareholders trying it on with "due diligence" lawsuits...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Flamebait that this is, the poster has a point, apart from the "write it yourself" - the idea of OSS is that code can be freely shared, and reused.
I've been using Mozilla since M15 - and it's coming along great. Admittedly, it is one memory hungry bastard (but hey I've got 512MB to play with
Whatever you have to say about how long it has taken to write Mozilla, it is still an awesome project. OK, it can't handle secure sites very well, and I still haven't got Java to work right (JavaScript is OK though...), but that will come.
What really, really pisses me off is sites like UnOlympics which assume that everybody uses Netscape or IE. I don't have Opera or Lynx handy, so I can't check if they work, but the browser wars are hurting everybody - web developers have to encase their entire sites in switch statemens, users have differing experiences of the same sites, and what industry seems to be blind to is that it is costing them money - the only stick that they will heed...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Imagine I'm not a semi literate retard who can type properly, and put a 10 in the loop control section instead of a 0... Then think about it... I'd say it would be optimised by the compiler, and my example gives the compiler a better chance of getting a top optimisation...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
void main()
{
for (int i=0; i < 0; i++)
{
printf("Repeat 10 times after me: Sourcecode is text. Text may be copyrighted and trademarked, but the ideas behind them should be free!");
}
}
Would be how I'd have written it (although
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
I'm thinking proper cracking. Trawl all targeted servers, find as much confidential info, publish it, _then_ take the cracked server down. I'm not talking about a one off 5kript kiddie attack here, I'm imagining full out terrorist action. Every server they own, every website. Not a random smattering of sites, but a concerted, planned all out attack. Don't forget how many millions it cost Sun when Mitnick was prowling _one_ of their machines!
I am in no way advocating this as a reasonable course of action (which is probably why we're having this discussion in the first place; most of us nerds are too reasonable and moral to do bad things in the name of a higher purpose; shame that corporations don't feel this way), just a possibility. Note that the downside of this action is _very_ bad - jail for 5+ years does not appeal.
High profile attacks on sites will focus media attention on what's going on, get the message out to more people that they are losing their rights and freedoms via backdoor policies. And don't forget the embarassment of not being able to keep a website up on the internet, or the loss of business that may ensue for many corporates.
Aside from morality, the only flaw in what I've said is the real world cost of getting caught, and it's a biggy. Which is why in my earlier post, I quickly dismissed this line of thinking. The only way forward is the BBS.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Nah, that's a Micro$lop trick - maybe CT is using SQL server?
I've lost count of the functions in Win32 that either take a parameter of "reserved" or a pointer to a struct which has several "Reserved for internal use" mmebers... Tried tracing them through a few times, there's some weird shit that goes through the guts of Windows...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
And if you're going to rip lyrics, at least drop a credit to the authors...
Queensryche, on the album "Operation Mindcrime"
If you don't have it, you should. It's one of the strongest albums in the rock genre I've ever heard.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Like it or not, the guy's right. Slowly, as corporate awareness of the internet is building, legislation and lawsuits are being drafted to fit the corporate vision of the way the Internet should be.
So what can we do?
Several courses of action can be taken:
1) Fight them on the beaches. Give lots of cash to EFF in the US, get active on www.stand.co.uk in Britain, and various other internet rights organisations. Fight them on their own ground -the courts. The trouble is, too many people are unaware of what is going on with the Internet and law - and many of those who do know what's going on don't care - a sort of "when they came for the Jews..." type argument. But faced with corporate giants with endlessly payrolled legal departments, rights organisations are left with a David vs Goliath scenario, only this time David can't afford many stones.
2) Nerd walkout days. Organise, unite, don't work for any company that you think is oppressing freedoms. Cut off their tech supply. The problem with this is us nerds still need to eat, and I don't expect any solidarity from other techs persuing lucrative options and large salaries.
3) Hacktivism - if a company is oppressing freedom on the net, then prevent them from participating. DDOS, hacks, bandwidth consumption attacks - send the message of "play nice or we won't let you play at all". The problem of this is the corporate and governmental corporate machinery is very much geared against this, and you?d probably end up in jail for a loooong time. Very bad idea.
So what does that leave? Nothing. Face it - the days of the free and easy internet are gone. There is too much money to be made on the internet, and it is perceived there can be a lot of money to be lost (like MP3.com's record payout to that record company). So the internet is going through a transition from being mostly an academic tool to be a consumer product delivery mechanism. I don't like this any more than you, but face it - we have lost. We are outgunned on all sides, and the only recourse is to fall on our swords (quit that high paying web dev job), which isn't likely.
However, the original spirit of the internet will live on. How? Back to bulletin boards. And heads will have to be kept even lower than before.
As www.ntk.net says - "they stole our revolution. Now we're stealing it back".
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
That was four years ago, when I was in Swindon the pilot had been running for 2 years and nobody really used it. I guess that it was abandoned, 'cos I've not seen it elsewhere since... (now livinf in London)
Maybe with this newfangled internet thingy getting popular, it may be worth another go...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
But not entirely like cash... It can still be traced to _you_ if Amex add the one-shot CC to your ordinary bill...
What I'd like to see is something akin to the phonecards - go into any supermarket/corner shop, hand over the moolah (in cash) and get a card worth the same amount. That's as close to untraceable cash as you'll get...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
In addition to this, we were taught basic business skills - project management, letter writing, all the stuff businesses will take for granted.
Compare this with the self taught, and there is no contest.
That said, from a personal perspective - in colleges you'll meet a whole bunch of people with similar interests, who will probably remain in your life until you die. And you'll be a couple of years older and wiser, and more able to deal with those 70 hour weeks you'll be doing!!!
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
A masterpiece of engineering.
Car tax (yearly tax which allegedly goes to the maintainance of the roads & motorways) in the UK is high, as is petrol. The Reliant Robin was designed with 3 wheels so it would be classed as a motorbike.
It had a tiny, tiny engine, but the bodywork was all fibreglass, so whilst it's not exactly a sports car, it wasn't totally sluggish. In fact, one managed to escape whilst being chased by a police car.
So, there we have it - a legal and car hack to reduce the TCO of owning a car.
The only downside is they were never seen as fanny magnets...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Add a shiny click through license (protected by DMCA) that states you are a private individual...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
I'm surprised that nobody has registered their ire by organising DOS / mass cracks of MPAA affiliated sites. Sort of like hacktivists saying "we don't like what you're doing to our web, so we won't let you play on it. You've bought the courts, but this is our manor, you are just guests"
There was PimpShiz for Napster (interview was fairly recent on
I'm not in any way advising anyone to do any of the above; just curious as to why the 2600 crowd (amongst whom I should imagine there are some _real_ 31337 d00ds) aren't doing anything. Maybe Emmanuel has more control of them than I realise with his plea to leave it to the courts.
I know there are some of you reading this who are thinking that this is an immoral (censoring their free speech and all) way of advancing the issue, but I'd look at it like this: big pocketed corporation vs a few loosely affiliated nerds. BPC can buy courts, LANs cannot. They have their tools, we have ours. It's just like David and Goliath...
Discuss...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Compare and contrast the UK experience on things...
When I first bought a copy of Linux (didn't have a spare T1 kicking about and 650MB is a looong wait on 56K), I had to go to about 4 shops before I found it.
Browsing the same shops last week (Tottenham Court Rd), I saw release of Corel, SuSe, RedHat and Mandrake. And where there were _no_ books before, there was a good 25% of the shelf space taken up by Linux Howto... style books, by all major publishers... Gathering momentum as we speak!
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Maybe Toshiba are just annoyed it didn't work out for them...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
It's _rock_ solid, runs on the Psion. I've had my Psion for 2 years, and it has _never_ crashed. Nope, that's _never_.
Why is it that everyone is trying to push this wireless crap at us all the time? Look at the amount of cash invested into WAP over here in the UK; and how many people are using it?
Until we get _fast_ wireless protocols rolled out live, these toys will remain underused.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
I've been trying to get a Debian release to download all week.
The hoops Debian make you jump through to get a version downloaded together is the biggest problem of all...
I'm trying to do the download on my company's fast comms line, but wget doesn't like my proxy, and the documentation on using wget with a proxy server is seriously minimal.
Sorry, but _I_ wasn't impressed with Debian. ALL I WANT IS THE BLOODY ISO!!!
Maybe I'll shell out the cash & buy the CD's...
OT - looking down most computer software shops in Tottenham Court Road (London, UK) this week; all of them had RedHat, lots had Suse, some had Corel and two even had Mandrake!!!
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
And, no, I _do_ support anonymous posting. For stuff like "my employer...", "my hellmouth..." etc etc etc.
Not "I fancy taking cheap shots at people who're getting more attention than ME with no responsibility for what I said".
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
You may not like what Bruce, RMS et al write...
But at least they have the balls to put their names to what they write.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
You can either take another hit off the crack pipe, or develop a sense of HUMOUR!!!
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Never arrange to meet Bruce on a moonlit night in a graveyeard, and keep the crucifix and garlic to hand...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.