In fact, the last two times I have flown, I have, entirely by accident, smuggled two knives onto an airplane
A couple months ago, I went on my first business trip for the place I work. They sent me to Houston, Texas. Before I went, every said "be sure to eat some BBQ". I did my best, but the hours were stupidly long, and the only good BBQ place was a cab-ride away. But on the last day, everyone piled into a cab and went out for some awesome, awesome BBQ. I got an extra sandwich with BBQ sauce to have on the plane (since food isn't provided anymore). It was an early morning flight, so I just stayed up rather than taking a near useless 1 hour nap.
Early in the morning, I zombied my way through security. Shoes off, laptop out, all my tools packed. The guards were hassling everyone about hand cream, hand sanitizer, etc. I had my three bottles in a baggie out already. Other people were arguing, red-faced and sunburned, about their creams. The guards were being very strict that day. I just wanted through. I put everything, including my breakfast, through the Xray, went through the metal detector without a hitch, and soon enough, I was on the plane.
Once the seatbelt lights were off, I cracked out the po boy, and dug in. It was very good the day after, especially dipped in BBQ sauce. And then, after about the second bite, once the proteins kicked in, I realized I was dipping the sandwich in a gigantic, for-surely-more-than-3-oz contained of liquid, oddly colored beef juice. And that's when I realized-- how in the hell did I get this on the plane? I didn't hide it, didn't conceal it, had it right out in the open.
But in reality, it was Texan BBQ sauce. The only thing it'd be terrorizing would be a vegetarian.
Pair programmers are more than twice as productive as a single developer when you factor in all the errors and bugs prevented by having two sets of eyes on the same problem.
Also, having someone watch over you makes it harder to slack off on Slashdot. Harder, but not impossible, of course.
They're going to start signing them! Awesome. Signed things automatically double in value. I'm going to get a bunch of them now, then hold onto them until ICANN and NIST die. Then they'll double in value again, and I'm in the profits!
Clarification: Mention the existence of possible alternatives, but not what they are (or they'll be cybersquatted, too).
Or even better, get a whole bunch of friends together. Over time, all of you contact the sqautter to express interest in various domains. DO mention specific alternatives. Make them register squat each and every one of those domains. Drag the "negotiations" out as long as possible, wasting their time. Repeat with new domains and new email accounts. Flood them with so many requests (which they can't afford to ignore) that it either drives them out of business or eats up a significant amount of time / resources every day.
Obvious solution, group them together by site. Instead of a dozen separate tabs which say 'Slashdot Co...'
This was driving me batty, since even with only 5-6 tabs open, I could tell which article was which. My solution was to install Grease Monkey in Firefox, and create a new User Script that ran on http://.slashdot.org/*, with the following code:
If someone is savvy enough to be on the big list, wouldn't they already be predisposed to saying no to any product/service? So, take a phonebook, subtract the DNC list, and call the rest. At least you know the recipients won't be hostile...
A good point, but I can see the value of phoning the DNC list. A large portion of the list are savvy people who don't want to be phoned. But then there's also all those people's friends, families, or anyone they knew with a phone. Maybe they signed up Grandma because they knew she is easily manipulated. Heck, a whole bunch of people are on the list not because they know what it is, but because the news told them to do it (suggestible people).
So it becomes a "minority shot in the dark" again. Some of the people on the DNC list are suckers. And as far as the list vs. the phone book goes, nearly every single number in the DNC list is a verified number (people signed themselves up), it is cheaper to buy than a spam list (citation needed, but I don't have the numbers on hand), and it's already in a machine-readible format.
Maybe everyone should start heavily spamming the DNC list with fake numbers. But the damage is already done. The 99.99% pure list is out there, ready to be sold and resold.
You got modded funny, but you're correct. I've been saying this for years. They just need to take it one step farther.
Do as you say; hunt down the worst of the group, and make a gigantic, bloody, painful mess of them. Make sure every spammer knows this may happen to them, without further warning. BUT you've only taken care of part of the problem. Spammers will be more cautious, and the companies that sell their products through spammers will keep selling them.
So go after the market. No, not the sellers. The market. What does everyone say when the question "who the fuck buys from spam anyways"? They always say "Well, there's always that small percentage of idiots...". Fine. Take out the fucking idiots who are basically supporting these spammers. When you take down the largest spam net, capture their customer list. Send cyanide capsules marked as "v1agara" to each and every one of them.
I guaren-fucking-tee you, as soon as the headlines hit the news, the problem will be solved. "300,000 americans dead from poisioned pills bought by spammers". Not only will you kill the market for anyone who wants to sell because most of their clients are dead and the others are scared shitless, you'll also have a MASSIVE public outcry to "do something" about it. You'll get public funding and governmental go-ahead to continue the project. Not only will you get to hunt down and DESTROY the rest of the major operations, but you can do it with the public's money and blessing, and be hailed as heros.
Fuck the checklist, our genepool needs a healty dose of chlorine.
And do it hard. You'll have every single person in Canada thanking you. You see, we, too, have a Do Not Call list. Highly publicized, and for a while, highly effective. Until the CRTC (it's like the FTC with a missing chromosome that drank lead paint as a child) decided to sell the list to anyone who would give them a piece of hard candy. This included every single spammer, scammer and fuckbot. A few months ago, everyone in Canada got barraged by these exact same calls. Our CRTC then said "durrr, well, they'se in the States, so we won't do anything about it beaver poutine Mulrouny."
So the Do Not Call list became "Cheap list of verified numbers for people who can give you money but whose government can't arrest you."
So as the title says, please, when you find them, make an example out of them. Call them terrorists. We'll agree then look the other way!
I think this is a great idea. We should make PSAs to educate our youth with. After all, we OWE it to future generations to ensure they have plenty of filler material to MST before the main feature begins. Who knows, maybe they'll have perfected Host Segments by then.
You don't advertise an all-you-can-eat buffet, and then kick out a customer when they sit down and eat for three hours straight.
Close. It's more like "You don't advertise an 'all you can eat shrimp buffet', and have ten seats available to it, and then read industry reports that say people eat twenty shrimp in an average sitting, and then only put out a hundred shrimp, and then yell at anyone who eats eleven or more shrimp, and then refuse to buy more shrimp because it'll cost you money, and then you get money from the Government Restaurant Authority to subsidize your restaurant, and then instead of buying more shrimp you spend it on more tables so you can have more customers, and then you yell at anyone who eats more than FIVE shrimp, and then you tell people that it's all you can eat, but if you want to eat all you want it'll cost you ten times as much."
Nah. Sometimes I think a two-pronged brute force attack would work best.
Prong 1, make it uncomfortable / undesirable to want to be on the sending/selling end of the spam economy. This addresses the issue of "We can't prosecute them because they're in a foreign country and besides, another one would just pop up anyways". Take a REAL task force, and send them into that country. Hunt down the operators. Bomb their facility, destroy their equipment, then shoot each one, and leave the bodies as a warning. That will eliminate some operators from wanting to get into the business, especially after the third or fourth time. Or it will just drive them underground and force them to take many more expensive anonymity measures. Overall effect: fewer sellers, higher cost.
Prong 2, remove the market by removing the buyers. Spam works because someone, somewhere along the lines buys stuff. Sure, spammers sell to product sellers who want to sell their product-- but if there were no customers, those seller wouldn't want to sell. So after eliminating the first few large operations, grab their customer list. Send each person on that list a free sample of arsenic, labeled as 'Viagra'. They're stupid enough to take stuff from the Internet, so no big loss. And when the major news networks run the story "Internet pills kill 10,000 americans", you can bet any survivors won't be buying that shit anymore. And you might just also earn yourself some funding for another round of Prong 1 to "get rid of those poisoning spammers".
Not only that, but it seems this isn't the first mechanical foosball table built at the University of Waterloo. Back in 2003, my fiance saw the demo of a laser-guided foosball table made by some fourth-year engineers. So either this is built upon work done by past students, or is reinventing the foosball-playing wheel. It'd be nice if their website acknowledged it either which way.
Usage probably dropped-off due to fears over Conficker, as people avoided using their internet on April 1 (including me)
Nah, man. It just goes to show that April 1st's Internet Reboot worked exactly like they said it would. It cleaned up a bunch of old websites that were clogging things up with their traffics.
Slashdot Mirror
A couple months ago, I went on my first business trip for the place I work. They sent me to Houston, Texas. Before I went, every said "be sure to eat some BBQ". I did my best, but the hours were stupidly long, and the only good BBQ place was a cab-ride away. But on the last day, everyone piled into a cab and went out for some awesome, awesome BBQ. I got an extra sandwich with BBQ sauce to have on the plane (since food isn't provided anymore). It was an early morning flight, so I just stayed up rather than taking a near useless 1 hour nap.
Early in the morning, I zombied my way through security. Shoes off, laptop out, all my tools packed. The guards were hassling everyone about hand cream, hand sanitizer, etc. I had my three bottles in a baggie out already. Other people were arguing, red-faced and sunburned, about their creams. The guards were being very strict that day. I just wanted through. I put everything, including my breakfast, through the Xray, went through the metal detector without a hitch, and soon enough, I was on the plane.
Once the seatbelt lights were off, I cracked out the po boy, and dug in. It was very good the day after, especially dipped in BBQ sauce. And then, after about the second bite, once the proteins kicked in, I realized I was dipping the sandwich in a gigantic, for-surely-more-than-3-oz contained of liquid, oddly colored beef juice. And that's when I realized-- how in the hell did I get this on the plane? I didn't hide it, didn't conceal it, had it right out in the open.
But in reality, it was Texan BBQ sauce. The only thing it'd be terrorizing would be a vegetarian.
Also, having someone watch over you makes it harder to slack off on Slashdot. Harder, but not impossible, of course.
They're going to start signing them! Awesome. Signed things automatically double in value. I'm going to get a bunch of them now, then hold onto them until ICANN and NIST die. Then they'll double in value again, and I'm in the profits!
Or even better, get a whole bunch of friends together. Over time, all of you contact the sqautter to express interest in various domains. DO mention specific alternatives. Make them register squat each and every one of those domains. Drag the "negotiations" out as long as possible, wasting their time. Repeat with new domains and new email accounts. Flood them with so many requests (which they can't afford to ignore) that it either drives them out of business or eats up a significant amount of time / resources every day.
True, but a car company lasting 10 years might be unheard of. So much for the warranty.
Slightly off topic, but:
This was driving me batty, since even with only 5-6 tabs open, I could tell which article was which. My solution was to install Grease Monkey in Firefox, and create a new User Script that ran on http://.slashdot.org/*, with the following code:
document.title = document.title.replace(/^Slashdot (Comments ){0,1}\| /g, '');
Slashcode devs: Screen real estate is a valuable commodity!
Impressive, but can you install UNIX on it?
That's not my sand...
That's okay, that's not my ostrich.
You know what's really good that came from the Internet? The term "wah-mbulance". Sure, it's a bit overused, but I think it applies.
A good point, but I can see the value of phoning the DNC list. A large portion of the list are savvy people who don't want to be phoned. But then there's also all those people's friends, families, or anyone they knew with a phone. Maybe they signed up Grandma because they knew she is easily manipulated. Heck, a whole bunch of people are on the list not because they know what it is, but because the news told them to do it (suggestible people).
So it becomes a "minority shot in the dark" again. Some of the people on the DNC list are suckers. And as far as the list vs. the phone book goes, nearly every single number in the DNC list is a verified number (people signed themselves up), it is cheaper to buy than a spam list (citation needed, but I don't have the numbers on hand), and it's already in a machine-readible format.
Maybe everyone should start heavily spamming the DNC list with fake numbers. But the damage is already done. The 99.99% pure list is out there, ready to be sold and resold.
Do as you say; hunt down the worst of the group, and make a gigantic, bloody, painful mess of them. Make sure every spammer knows this may happen to them, without further warning. BUT you've only taken care of part of the problem. Spammers will be more cautious, and the companies that sell their products through spammers will keep selling them.
So go after the market. No, not the sellers. The market. What does everyone say when the question "who the fuck buys from spam anyways"? They always say "Well, there's always that small percentage of idiots...". Fine. Take out the fucking idiots who are basically supporting these spammers. When you take down the largest spam net, capture their customer list. Send cyanide capsules marked as "v1agara" to each and every one of them.
I guaren-fucking-tee you, as soon as the headlines hit the news, the problem will be solved. "300,000 americans dead from poisioned pills bought by spammers". Not only will you kill the market for anyone who wants to sell because most of their clients are dead and the others are scared shitless, you'll also have a MASSIVE public outcry to "do something" about it. You'll get public funding and governmental go-ahead to continue the project. Not only will you get to hunt down and DESTROY the rest of the major operations, but you can do it with the public's money and blessing, and be hailed as heros.
Fuck the checklist, our genepool needs a healty dose of chlorine.
But why not just, you know, learn to play an actual guitar?
Because I'm too busy driving my Ferrari and shooting Nazis, all while making geometrical shapes line up and vanish into thin air.
Excuse me, my genetically engineered Neopet wants to go for a walk.
So the Do Not Call list became "Cheap list of verified numbers for people who can give you money but whose government can't arrest you."
So as the title says, please, when you find them, make an example out of them. Call them terrorists. We'll agree then look the other way!
Just add to the listing "Drives are being liquidated from the assets of bankrupt mortgage company."
I think this is a great idea. We should make PSAs to educate our youth with. After all, we OWE it to future generations to ensure they have plenty of filler material to MST before the main feature begins. Who knows, maybe they'll have perfected Host Segments by then.
Close. It's more like "You don't advertise an 'all you can eat shrimp buffet', and have ten seats available to it, and then read industry reports that say people eat twenty shrimp in an average sitting, and then only put out a hundred shrimp, and then yell at anyone who eats eleven or more shrimp, and then refuse to buy more shrimp because it'll cost you money, and then you get money from the Government Restaurant Authority to subsidize your restaurant, and then instead of buying more shrimp you spend it on more tables so you can have more customers, and then you yell at anyone who eats more than FIVE shrimp, and then you tell people that it's all you can eat, but if you want to eat all you want it'll cost you ten times as much."
And then you get sued for a run-on sentence.
Nah. Sometimes I think a two-pronged brute force attack would work best.
Prong 1, make it uncomfortable / undesirable to want to be on the sending/selling end of the spam economy. This addresses the issue of "We can't prosecute them because they're in a foreign country and besides, another one would just pop up anyways". Take a REAL task force, and send them into that country. Hunt down the operators. Bomb their facility, destroy their equipment, then shoot each one, and leave the bodies as a warning. That will eliminate some operators from wanting to get into the business, especially after the third or fourth time. Or it will just drive them underground and force them to take many more expensive anonymity measures. Overall effect: fewer sellers, higher cost.
Prong 2, remove the market by removing the buyers. Spam works because someone, somewhere along the lines buys stuff. Sure, spammers sell to product sellers who want to sell their product-- but if there were no customers, those seller wouldn't want to sell. So after eliminating the first few large operations, grab their customer list. Send each person on that list a free sample of arsenic, labeled as 'Viagra'. They're stupid enough to take stuff from the Internet, so no big loss. And when the major news networks run the story "Internet pills kill 10,000 americans", you can bet any survivors won't be buying that shit anymore. And you might just also earn yourself some funding for another round of Prong 1 to "get rid of those poisoning spammers".
I'm going to get a picture of a *facepalm* tattoo'd on my face. And my palm.
Not only that, but it seems this isn't the first mechanical foosball table built at the University of Waterloo. Back in 2003, my fiance saw the demo of a laser-guided foosball table made by some fourth-year engineers. So either this is built upon work done by past students, or is reinventing the foosball-playing wheel. It'd be nice if their website acknowledged it either which way.
Nah, man. It just goes to show that April 1st's Internet Reboot worked exactly like they said it would. It cleaned up a bunch of old websites that were clogging things up with their traffics.
Looks good so far, reasonable, tech savvy-- he just wants to ensure everyone uses stable, functioning software, and---
*facepalm*
Wait, what's the dog going to do with an iPod?
User cron has earned: Days Read in a Row
I don't want to earn The April Fool achievement. How do I avoid that?
I don't understand it. That was non-alcoholic champagne.