Re:Hacking Xbox=way cheaper than anything else
on
Xbox 360 for $300
·
· Score: 1
The newest models are v1.6. The earlier models (1.4, for example), can still use the solder method.
Re:Hacking Xbox=way cheaper than anything else
on
Xbox 360 for $300
·
· Score: 1
I was under the impression that one still had to solder a couple of points on the motherboards of the earlier models of the XBox in order to write-enable the BIOS. Then the fake savegame took advantage of a buffer overrun to run an executable that flashed the BIOS to remove the requirement that "normal" executables be cryptographically signed by Microsoft.
Of course, the newest XBoxes require a modchip. Luckily I bought mine (used) before that was true.
Still, even if you had one of the older editions, if you were going at it alone you had to buy (or rent) the game and buy a memory card. So that's like $30 at a minimum.
On the other hand, if you have friends that already have the materials, it only costs a couple of pints down at the pub...
There was an article posted on/. a little while ago about how the private weather companies are lobbying congress to force the National Weather Service to stop giving any non-emergency data to private entities, because it isn't fair that the gov't is competing with the private sector. I think it's ridiculous, personally, as I paid for the weather data to begin with, so I should get a copy for my own purposes. If the privates want to stay in business, they'll have to offer me something above and beyond what I've already paid for. The point is, though, that congress could pass a law making it illegal for Medicare to disclose the source code.
That's not necessarily true, actually... If you live in the countryside in Illinois (USA), there aren't speed limit signs posted anywhere. The speed limit is 55 MPH.
Yes and no... What do property taxes really pay for? One of the main things, at least in my state (IL, USA) is the school system. As my dad is on our local school board, I know that our schools are really hurting for cash at the moment. Furthermore, since most of the land values in our area come from farmland, it is very hard to convince people that a tax increase is worth the extra expense to their (also cash-strapped) farms.
I don't like paying taxes any more than anyone else, but you really have to look at what the tax is and where it is being spent before making decisions.
I don't think so. I'm fairly certain our farm gets paid a certain amount every year by the government to let a certain percentage of our land go unused. Of course, we manage it so that the percentage that we don't use corresponds with land that's barely usable in the first place, but that's just good business sense.
Microsoft Office on both Windows (2003) and the Mac (2004) integrates with Encarta, along with some of Microsoft's other online services. So it is, in fact, F/OSS that's copying Microsoft.
To be fair, though, you should be paying taxes on the real market value. If you aren't, you deserve to lose out if the gov't decides it is in the best interest of the people to seize your property. I don't think that should happen very often (my family lost a lot of wonderful farmland when the interstate highway system was built in our area) but it does, and I don't feel any sorrier for you if you've been cheating on your property taxes.
Believe me, in my opinion this ruling is ridiculous. The Economist wrote a wonderful summary of the issues when the case first went in front of the court, so if you have access to their archives you might take a look at that for more info as well.
I've always thought, though, that to avoid people cheating on property taxes (and heck, to get rid of some of the need for gov't appraisers) people should be able to declare the value of their property for taxation purposes. The gov't, then, has the right to either tax the property at that level, or purchase the property at that price and do with it whatever they want.
(b) Search abroad. Canada, Ireland, UK, and, if you can handle the language, Germany, which are places often short on IT personnel.
Do you have any suggestions on how to search abroad? I will be graduating from college in December, and while our career services is pretty good for US positions, I would truely love to work in Ireland, the UK, or Germany (I speak German).
I have had a set of nail clippers and files taken from me. This was about two years ago, though.
Also, the list doesn't really matter. Read this:
The prohibited and permitted items chart is not intended to be all-inclusive and is updated as
necessary. To ensure everyone's security, the screener may determine that an item not on
the prohibited items chart is prohibited. In addition, the screener may also determine that an
item on the permitted chart is dangerous and therefore may not be brought through the
security checkpoint.
Yeah, but if I'm snooping through someone's system, the first place I look for things that might be interesting is going to be the Spotlight preferences. So I have mixed feelings about "hiding" anything with that preference...
Besides, if you're not putting your pr0n on encrypted disk images, you're not trying hard enough.
I used to have a phone that automatically switched off of vibrate and onto ring when you put it on the charger. Worked for the car charger, too. That phone got stolen, and I still miss calls because my new one doesn't do that. Oh well.
Nobody thinks of Monsanto grains which are genetically enhanced?
Normal farmers keep a certain amount of grains after the harvest to use it for the next year.
Monsanto forbids this. You must sell everything you harvested and buy a new set of grains from Monstanto at their prices. Farmers who would do the old way of keeping the cost down to run the farm will get sued hard...
Ah, but the farmers must be seeing gains in output greater than the costs associated with having to purchase new seed each year, or they would stick with the hybrid they are currently using. My dad is a farmer, and we raise RoundUp Ready soybeans on our farm. I can definitely tell you that the money we save in herbicide costs (not to mention the other gains you can get from various genetic developments) is far greater than the money we could save by using last year's crop as seed for next year.
Besides, this has been the case for a long time. Even before it was forbidden (and I'll get to that in a second) we didn't reuse seeds like you seem to think we did, because the crop simply doesn't work as well as seed. They have been developed for other characteristics, which is why farmers have been growing varieties designed to be seeds for years now.
Finally, I'm not so sure that farmers are forbidden from planting last years crop by any method other than the seed company making the 1st generation infertile. If you plant one of the seeds you grew, nothing will happen. It's not like the farmers didn't know this going in--if they didn't like it, they were free to use any number of competing varieties. Of course those varieties might not offer all the advantages that Monsanto's do... but that's the grower's decision to make.
Well, sure, their platform is pretty far out there. But, on the other hand, so are the platforms of the major parties. The people that actually get elected tend to be much more central-minded, for pragmatic reasons.
I have to disagree, I guess, regarding the forced charity being a social issue. I think it's more of an economic one, although I can definitely see it from both sides. Either way, I happen to agree with the LP about gov't charity.
I don't know. I have found that if I actually sit down and explain (what I think) the libertarian viewpoint might be on issues, and have a discussion on it, the people I am talking with usually tend to come over to my side. They initially are pretty afraid of it, but they come around. (Although maybe it's just to shut me up...;)
I certainly don't agree with everything the LP says, but although I wouldn't take it quite as far as they do, I think their positions tend to be the closest to mine. Anyway, it's all about the individual candidate anyway, so you can't really take party affiliation too seriously.
Unfortunately, the small, local bookstores on my campus have either closed due to lack of business (along with the small, local record stores) or in the case of the campus bookstores, don't carry the Economist. But that's a great idea... I'll have to look into it for some of the other stuff I occasionally pick up. You know, it's too bad that they can't donate those leftover magazines to libraries or something, rather than just throwing them out. I suppose it's probably part of their reseller's agreement, or something like that.
I always think it is a shame that this county (US) doesn't have a party that thinks like the Economist.
We do, and it's called the Libertarian Party. They may not be a major party, but that's only because most people think they're "wasting their vote" if they don't vote for one of the major two. Economically conservative and socially liberal - the best of both worlds.
Now, what I wish is that the Economist would offer a cheaper print subscription to broke college students like me. As it is, I buy a copy on the newsstands when I have a couple dollars laying around, but that's not very often, and I would love to read it more often. Plus, it's good for leaving around my fraternity, giving people a chance to read something other than Maxim for a change. I know about the online subscription, but it just isn't the same.
Blockbuster is one of the defendants of the lawsuit. In addition, the terms clearly state that the movies must have been purchased for personal use, not for resale.
Funny you don't see Microsoft having any trouble supporting other people's music stores. Multiple online stores selling music, multiple manufacturers making players - and they all work with each other. Do you see microsoft reverse engineering the WMA codecs to break stores other than MSN Music?
It's my understanding that those other stores and players all license the technology (and thus, the DRM) from Microsoft. So they're paying Microsoft for the right to use the format, implying that their product will work on all of those players, and from any store. On the other hand, Apple told Real that they didn't want to let Real use their format. This means that Real had no right to do so, and especially if Apple wants to ever license the FairPlay DRM in the future, Apple has to protect their turf. Otherwise, why would anyone pay them to use it?
Whoa... you had better watch out. Hail Marys are Roman Catholic. I'm pretty sure that Falwell would sue for defamation of character if he thought you were implying he was Roman Catholic as well...
I had the opportunity to speak with him (among a group of probably 20 other people) after Mr. Gates spoke at the University of Illinois last semester. He seemed like a very pleasant man and I was very impressed. Kind of expecting an arrogant and rude man (especially after the security crew basically told us that he told them to get us the hell out of there), he was very friendly and was willing to answer some questions and take some photos. He probably spoke with us for 5-10 minutes before his security people ushered him away.
One of the guys in our Mac user group at Illinois was smart enough to bring a camera. (I, unfortunately, forgot mine that night. Oh well...) A picture can be found here. I was standing about 2 feet to the left of the field of view, so I'm not in it. Also, there are about 20 uniformed and plainclothed police in the general area.
But hey, at least we are still primarily running *nix servers on the central servers.
Really? I thought they just switched all of what used to be the student and staff clusters to Windows servers for the new webmail service. I was pretty disappointed when I found out my shell account was going away, although honestly I haven't used it as much over the past couple years as I did my freshman and sophomore years.
And I was under the impression the Banner system ran on Windows servers too. Regardless of platform, though, Banner is horrible. I would much rather go back to the old timetables and use UI-Direct.
Sorry if you were involved in the Banner rollout. I'm not trying to be a dick, just telling it as a I see it. If you weren't involved, you probably feel much the same way I do.
You might as well say that it was the influence of water that caused those deaths. After all, I'm sure the father and son drank some water at some point before or during their hunting trip. The guy with the Ninja probably used water to shower that morning. And the kids on top of the water tower, well, hey, that one's obvious!
Hey, I was drinking water yesterday morning while operating heavy machinery. The supervisors even gave it to us! We're lucky nobody died.
And hey, if pot wasn't illegal, those kids wouldn't have had to go hide on top of the water tower to avoid being noticed. They might still be here if it weren't for ridiculous laws.
The fact is those people were killed by being stupid, not for smoking pot. Stories like these are just FUD, even if they are completely true.
Slashdot Mirror
The newest models are v1.6. The earlier models (1.4, for example), can still use the solder method.
I was under the impression that one still had to solder a couple of points on the motherboards of the earlier models of the XBox in order to write-enable the BIOS. Then the fake savegame took advantage of a buffer overrun to run an executable that flashed the BIOS to remove the requirement that "normal" executables be cryptographically signed by Microsoft.
Of course, the newest XBoxes require a modchip. Luckily I bought mine (used) before that was true.
Still, even if you had one of the older editions, if you were going at it alone you had to buy (or rent) the game and buy a memory card. So that's like $30 at a minimum.
On the other hand, if you have friends that already have the materials, it only costs a couple of pints down at the pub...
There was an article posted on /. a little while ago about how the private weather companies are lobbying congress to force the National Weather Service to stop giving any non-emergency data to private entities, because it isn't fair that the gov't is competing with the private sector. I think it's ridiculous, personally, as I paid for the weather data to begin with, so I should get a copy for my own purposes. If the privates want to stay in business, they'll have to offer me something above and beyond what I've already paid for. The point is, though, that congress could pass a law making it illegal for Medicare to disclose the source code.
That's not necessarily true, actually... If you live in the countryside in Illinois (USA), there aren't speed limit signs posted anywhere. The speed limit is 55 MPH.
Great, so he rear ends you because he's not paying attention. What a spectacular idea.
Yes and no... What do property taxes really pay for? One of the main things, at least in my state (IL, USA) is the school system. As my dad is on our local school board, I know that our schools are really hurting for cash at the moment. Furthermore, since most of the land values in our area come from farmland, it is very hard to convince people that a tax increase is worth the extra expense to their (also cash-strapped) farms.
I don't like paying taxes any more than anyone else, but you really have to look at what the tax is and where it is being spent before making decisions.
I don't think so. I'm fairly certain our farm gets paid a certain amount every year by the government to let a certain percentage of our land go unused. Of course, we manage it so that the percentage that we don't use corresponds with land that's barely usable in the first place, but that's just good business sense.
Microsoft Office on both Windows (2003) and the Mac (2004) integrates with Encarta, along with some of Microsoft's other online services. So it is, in fact, F/OSS that's copying Microsoft.
(IHBT)
To be fair, though, you should be paying taxes on the real market value. If you aren't, you deserve to lose out if the gov't decides it is in the best interest of the people to seize your property. I don't think that should happen very often (my family lost a lot of wonderful farmland when the interstate highway system was built in our area) but it does, and I don't feel any sorrier for you if you've been cheating on your property taxes.
Believe me, in my opinion this ruling is ridiculous. The Economist wrote a wonderful summary of the issues when the case first went in front of the court, so if you have access to their archives you might take a look at that for more info as well.
I've always thought, though, that to avoid people cheating on property taxes (and heck, to get rid of some of the need for gov't appraisers) people should be able to declare the value of their property for taxation purposes. The gov't, then, has the right to either tax the property at that level, or purchase the property at that price and do with it whatever they want.
Do you have any suggestions on how to search abroad? I will be graduating from college in December, and while our career services is pretty good for US positions, I would truely love to work in Ireland, the UK, or Germany (I speak German).
Yeah, but if I'm snooping through someone's system, the first place I look for things that might be interesting is going to be the Spotlight preferences. So I have mixed feelings about "hiding" anything with that preference...
Besides, if you're not putting your pr0n on encrypted disk images, you're not trying hard enough.
I used to have a phone that automatically switched off of vibrate and onto ring when you put it on the charger. Worked for the car charger, too. That phone got stolen, and I still miss calls because my new one doesn't do that. Oh well.
Ah, but the farmers must be seeing gains in output greater than the costs associated with having to purchase new seed each year, or they would stick with the hybrid they are currently using. My dad is a farmer, and we raise RoundUp Ready soybeans on our farm. I can definitely tell you that the money we save in herbicide costs (not to mention the other gains you can get from various genetic developments) is far greater than the money we could save by using last year's crop as seed for next year.
Besides, this has been the case for a long time. Even before it was forbidden (and I'll get to that in a second) we didn't reuse seeds like you seem to think we did, because the crop simply doesn't work as well as seed. They have been developed for other characteristics, which is why farmers have been growing varieties designed to be seeds for years now.
Finally, I'm not so sure that farmers are forbidden from planting last years crop by any method other than the seed company making the 1st generation infertile. If you plant one of the seeds you grew, nothing will happen. It's not like the farmers didn't know this going in--if they didn't like it, they were free to use any number of competing varieties. Of course those varieties might not offer all the advantages that Monsanto's do... but that's the grower's decision to make.
Well, sure, their platform is pretty far out there. But, on the other hand, so are the platforms of the major parties. The people that actually get elected tend to be much more central-minded, for pragmatic reasons.
I have to disagree, I guess, regarding the forced charity being a social issue. I think it's more of an economic one, although I can definitely see it from both sides. Either way, I happen to agree with the LP about gov't charity.
I don't know. I have found that if I actually sit down and explain (what I think) the libertarian viewpoint might be on issues, and have a discussion on it, the people I am talking with usually tend to come over to my side. They initially are pretty afraid of it, but they come around. (Although maybe it's just to shut me up... ;)
I certainly don't agree with everything the LP says, but although I wouldn't take it quite as far as they do, I think their positions tend to be the closest to mine. Anyway, it's all about the individual candidate anyway, so you can't really take party affiliation too seriously.
Unfortunately, the small, local bookstores on my campus have either closed due to lack of business (along with the small, local record stores) or in the case of the campus bookstores, don't carry the Economist. But that's a great idea... I'll have to look into it for some of the other stuff I occasionally pick up. You know, it's too bad that they can't donate those leftover magazines to libraries or something, rather than just throwing them out. I suppose it's probably part of their reseller's agreement, or something like that.
We do, and it's called the Libertarian Party. They may not be a major party, but that's only because most people think they're "wasting their vote" if they don't vote for one of the major two. Economically conservative and socially liberal - the best of both worlds.
Now, what I wish is that the Economist would offer a cheaper print subscription to broke college students like me. As it is, I buy a copy on the newsstands when I have a couple dollars laying around, but that's not very often, and I would love to read it more often. Plus, it's good for leaving around my fraternity, giving people a chance to read something other than Maxim for a change. I know about the online subscription, but it just isn't the same.
Blockbuster is one of the defendants of the lawsuit. In addition, the terms clearly state that the movies must have been purchased for personal use, not for resale.
It's my understanding that those other stores and players all license the technology (and thus, the DRM) from Microsoft. So they're paying Microsoft for the right to use the format, implying that their product will work on all of those players, and from any store. On the other hand, Apple told Real that they didn't want to let Real use their format. This means that Real had no right to do so, and especially if Apple wants to ever license the FairPlay DRM in the future, Apple has to protect their turf. Otherwise, why would anyone pay them to use it?
Whoa... you had better watch out. Hail Marys are Roman Catholic. I'm pretty sure that Falwell would sue for defamation of character if he thought you were implying he was Roman Catholic as well...
(Disclaimer: I was raised Roman Catholic.)
I had the opportunity to speak with him (among a group of probably 20 other people) after Mr. Gates spoke at the University of Illinois last semester. He seemed like a very pleasant man and I was very impressed. Kind of expecting an arrogant and rude man (especially after the security crew basically told us that he told them to get us the hell out of there), he was very friendly and was willing to answer some questions and take some photos. He probably spoke with us for 5-10 minutes before his security people ushered him away.
One of the guys in our Mac user group at Illinois was smart enough to bring a camera. (I, unfortunately, forgot mine that night. Oh well...) A picture can be found here. I was standing about 2 feet to the left of the field of view, so I'm not in it. Also, there are about 20 uniformed and plainclothed police in the general area.
Just so no one thinks you (alone) are a moron, I did the same thing. Sorry for the me-too! post.
Really? I thought they just switched all of what used to be the student and staff clusters to Windows servers for the new webmail service. I was pretty disappointed when I found out my shell account was going away, although honestly I haven't used it as much over the past couple years as I did my freshman and sophomore years.
And I was under the impression the Banner system ran on Windows servers too. Regardless of platform, though, Banner is horrible. I would much rather go back to the old timetables and use UI-Direct.
Sorry if you were involved in the Banner rollout. I'm not trying to be a dick, just telling it as a I see it. If you weren't involved, you probably feel much the same way I do.
This is offtopic but spot-on. Well done, this is one of the most insightful things I've read on here in a long time.
You might as well say that it was the influence of water that caused those deaths. After all, I'm sure the father and son drank some water at some point before or during their hunting trip. The guy with the Ninja probably used water to shower that morning. And the kids on top of the water tower, well, hey, that one's obvious!
Hey, I was drinking water yesterday morning while operating heavy machinery. The supervisors even gave it to us! We're lucky nobody died.
And hey, if pot wasn't illegal, those kids wouldn't have had to go hide on top of the water tower to avoid being noticed. They might still be here if it weren't for ridiculous laws.
The fact is those people were killed by being stupid, not for smoking pot. Stories like these are just FUD, even if they are completely true.