I've seen more believable chain letters than many of these articles.
Let's review
We have a pastor who wanted to prove to the world he could walk on water and attempts to make the walk to prove this... WITHOUT INVITING ANYONE who obviously knew how to swim. Hey he's supposed to sink first right, and then arise like a submarine surfacing fast?
Or we have the man who missed his stop, forced open the doors, and leaps from the moving car to his death. Since he didn't talk to anyone I would love to know which psychic aboard knew what he was thinking. Personally, if the story is true (very big if), it sounds more like suicide.
You have the electrician playing next to power lines. You have references without actual links (good luck finding the story). And the list goes on...
"And I've seen the mythbusters make a lethal paper crossbow out of newspaper and a lunch tray"
I saw that episode too. From what I remember they used table saws to cut up the lunch tray and assembled the crossbows using underwear elastic, glue, lots of time, and letting it sit over night to harden.
Now, I don't know how observant you are; but if I saw someone next too me taking the elastic (strand by strand) out of his underwear and assembling a paper crossbow I would definetly push the button to call a stewartess. Now assuming I was a sleeping the whole time, the tray was pre-cut, and no one walked by to see the thing drying, I would love to see it shoot through
"Just because they're "murderous" doesn't mean that they're stupid or uncreative"
That could be said about several groups. Replace the word murderous with several softer words (usually) and you can have that apply to special intrest groups, industry, governments, anyone. People can be surprising clever when it comes to trying to get what the want, especially if that thing is power or control over another.
In a more serious note would it really be impossible to hire a lawyer and file a class action suit against anyone who called your cell phone, sent you an e-mail, or some other way harrassed you in the "real" world? It seems to me that if 1 in 10 have been harrassed like that, then you would definetly have the social backing. Not that I believe those numbers for a second. If it where true, then following the trend would imply everyone in that country will be targeted within the next 10 years. You would think that having felt the effect they would stop doing it to others. So, the problem kills itself... In a perfect world.
With all the hype about airport security who in their right mind would would fill 3 condoms with a white powder and not expect it to be tested? That is like putting an electronic catch phrase in your luggage and not expecting it to be searched (ya know, the kind that that continously beeps faster and louder until it reaches an apex then stops).
What I want to know is how something like spermicide (which has a high likely hood of being on a condom) would affect the drug test.
I find it interesting that they dump Macs, every linux distro, and unix into one category and windows into another. The main point being all of the linux distrobutions lumped together. These are ongoing projects with new versions coming out frequently. Counting XP SP2 and 2003 SP1 I believe windows had 2. This is the same thing as saying Ford, Chevy, and GM combined had higher crash ratings than toyota last year. The "No Duh!" response leads me to believe this is Objective reporting at its best.
What I want to know is a breakdown of how many vulnerabilities each OS, distribution, and version had reported. How many of these were cross platform, found in every version of a OS, and which were version specific. Add another column for the number of bugs that where reported by a 3rd party interest and how fast these bugs were patched. Then add the same column but for self-reported bugs. Lastly, too be fair to MS, give the current estimated market share.
You are right. The only problem to this is that everyone believes in a religon. Even Atheism has no proof and therefore must be based on "belief". I submit that religon itself is not a problem. The problem comes when people base it as a sole reason for their actions, or try to force their religous belief upon someone else. Ignorance to facts that contradict your belief are ignored, factons are formed, biases are made, and wars are started. And thus, the danger.
Welcome to government of, by, and for the lawyers.
You forgot one thing: the corporations pay for the lawyers; thus it is not the government of the lawyers, but the government of, by, and for the corporation.
I think the brand is very much defined already. Let's face it, Kids are the main consumer of this type of game and I know of several demented middle schoolers who would love owning a game that has a gene that causes cancer named after it. The parents might be afraid the game could cause cancer, and that the two are linked; BUT having that fear would require the parents actually knowing which games their kids play, AND the name of that specific gene.
Then again, I am probably not giving credit too the age of media sound bytes. I can see the headlines and one liner news stations now. "A new meaning to pocket monsters; Pokemon linked with cancer! Are your kids safe? More after the break."
>>I know this was said as a joke, but I see this a lot amongst the geek community, the attitude that users just don't know what they are doing, and that is why they can't make anything work.
The reason you see it so often is because it is so true. User is a broad term, and I use it as anyone who is touching the system aside from the administrators (bosses, subordinates, that monkey down the hall). I work as a sys admin in a lab at the university I am currently attending and the worse things happen because a user thinks they know what they are doing when they don't. Here are a few of my favorite examples.
One user put a 3.5 floppy into a cd drive (One of those that has no tray, you just put in the cd.
Last week on our automatic DVD burner ("bob") we had a user put tape in the drive itself to help keep the dvd strait.
On this same burner the tape was causing the robot arm to put the dvd's off center so it was pushing down harder than is safe. Solution? Put a candy box underneath the drive tray and continue burning your 100 Dvd's. (with the tape still in). It has never slid all the way out since.
We had an operating system on one of our servers (Win 2000 at the time) crash, so the solution my boss required... Format the drive, I KNOW we have a backup -- As it turns out the backup was disabled a few months back and in my own defense, I refused too push the enter key on the format and the backup server did have data on it, just nothing from the last few months.
We use workstations connecting to a domain to authenticate profiles. About once a month we have to remind users not to save anything on their desktop and to use their home drive (a network mapping of a backed up server). One user disregarded this and had a copy of 2 dvd's on their desktop which had saved itself to the domain controller. They came into work the next morning, tried to log on to a different workstation and thought the system crashed because it took so long. They then attempted several machines in succession until I came in to find they had six machines all downloading local copies of their dvd's. It took about a half hour till any of those machines where useable.
In the defense of the user, those who "know" what they are doing often makes mistakes as well. My favorite example of this is when the IT office calls and tells me that I have a virus on my webserver and it opened a port that is getting a large amount of traffic. I was told to fix the problem immediately or my port would be shut off. Naturally I asked which port... the answer? Port 80. After a short technical explaination they agreed to leave my port alone if I would at least do a scan. I scanned with a few antivirus and spyware programs as well as looked at a hijackthis log. Surprise surprise, the system was clean
>
That is of course only if none of the following happened.
1. Industrial espionage. Other companies could and would steal the technology if they had the chance.
2. Reverse engineering. Ever hear of the generic brand? An invention that works is much easier to reverse engineer than an idea of an invention. Since there are no pantents to protect anyone from selling them once they figured it out this would be a thriving business.
3. You did not sell or give away the information. Once you are dying, and if you are truly proud of your invention you would release the creation details for either prestige, more money (you can never seem to have enough of that), just to be a good person, or as another post on slashdot.
4. You did not have a company. If you hand made every powercell this would be a possibility, but then lets face it. Where is the money?
5. You do not have any posterity. I highly doubt that you would not give your company to your children who would then do the same. This cycle never ends.
Without patents the money made from an invention is limited, but that does not mean the invention itself would be. I agree with short term, SIMPLE patents to allow inventors a window to make enough money they will be inspired to spend more time creating more and more inventions and not having to go work in a coal mine for the rest of their life to make a living. Another thing to keep in mind is that real world life inspires better methods of doing something. It may not be a bad idea for that postman to figure out how to actually make that flying car and not be sued because someone at hollywood thought up the idea (albiet with no technical knowledge of how to do it, or even a desire to attempt to figure it out).
I have one as well. I baught a power adapter for it and had rechargeable batteries for the road. 6 could last about an hour. Just enough too get through 1 game of xmen and a level of crystal warriors.... ahh, the good old days.
Sure the 8 hour introductory course is free... But how much will the 80 hour Overcoming D&D addiction course cost? Sounds a lot like legal drugs too me! Of course who am I to say anything. This is one drug I use frequently.
Making the general internet purely a kid friendly zone would help with many concerns parents have, but I do not believe it is going to happen. What is the likelyhood that the bad people who share unlawful or illegally copied pornography will all switch over to the xxx domain? The only real reason I see in this is to protect children from accidentally stumbling across bad things.
What's my prediction if this ever gets passed you asked? You will have an easier way of finding porn for sale by searching with the.xxx domain (as if you needed one), but nothing will change in the.com world. People who want too will still view porn. People who don't will still complain.
In my opinion instead of pushing the.xxx domain, we should be generating a database of "acceptable and non-questionable" stable websites that would be acceptable for general viewing. Then educate parents on how too set up firewalls to keep their minor children away from the stuff. Next we can encourage parents to spend enough time with their children they will feel confident in their childs choice in the matter.
Slashdot Mirror
What country do you live in. Here in the USA we have a Republic.
I've seen more believable chain letters than many of these articles.
Let's review
We have a pastor who wanted to prove to the world he could walk on water and attempts to make the walk to prove this... WITHOUT INVITING ANYONE who obviously knew how to swim. Hey he's supposed to sink first right, and then arise like a submarine surfacing fast?
Or we have the man who missed his stop, forced open the doors, and leaps from the moving car to his death. Since he didn't talk to anyone I would love to know which psychic aboard knew what he was thinking. Personally, if the story is true (very big if), it sounds more like suicide.
You have the electrician playing next to power lines. You have references without actual links (good luck finding the story). And the list goes on...
"And I've seen the mythbusters make a lethal paper crossbow out of newspaper and a lunch tray" I saw that episode too. From what I remember they used table saws to cut up the lunch tray and assembled the crossbows using underwear elastic, glue, lots of time, and letting it sit over night to harden. Now, I don't know how observant you are; but if I saw someone next too me taking the elastic (strand by strand) out of his underwear and assembling a paper crossbow I would definetly push the button to call a stewartess. Now assuming I was a sleeping the whole time, the tray was pre-cut, and no one walked by to see the thing drying, I would love to see it shoot through "Just because they're "murderous" doesn't mean that they're stupid or uncreative" That could be said about several groups. Replace the word murderous with several softer words (usually) and you can have that apply to special intrest groups, industry, governments, anyone. People can be surprising clever when it comes to trying to get what the want, especially if that thing is power or control over another.
"it's impossible to sue EVERYBODY"
Someone should tell that to the RIAA.
In a more serious note would it really be impossible to hire a lawyer and file a class action suit against anyone who called your cell phone, sent you an e-mail, or some other way harrassed you in the "real" world? It seems to me that if 1 in 10 have been harrassed like that, then you would definetly have the social backing. Not that I believe those numbers for a second. If it where true, then following the trend would imply everyone in that country will be targeted within the next 10 years. You would think that having felt the effect they would stop doing it to others. So, the problem kills itself... In a perfect world.
With all the hype about airport security who in their right mind would would fill 3 condoms with a white powder and not expect it to be tested? That is like putting an electronic catch phrase in your luggage and not expecting it to be searched (ya know, the kind that that continously beeps faster and louder until it reaches an apex then stops).
What I want to know is how something like spermicide (which has a high likely hood of being on a condom) would affect the drug test.
I find it interesting that they dump Macs, every linux distro, and unix into one category and windows into another. The main point being all of the linux distrobutions lumped together. These are ongoing projects with new versions coming out frequently. Counting XP SP2 and 2003 SP1 I believe windows had 2. This is the same thing as saying Ford, Chevy, and GM combined had higher crash ratings than toyota last year. The "No Duh!" response leads me to believe this is Objective reporting at its best.
What I want to know is a breakdown of how many vulnerabilities each OS, distribution, and version had reported. How many of these were cross platform, found in every version of a OS, and which were version specific. Add another column for the number of bugs that where reported by a 3rd party interest and how fast these bugs were patched. Then add the same column but for self-reported bugs. Lastly, too be fair to MS, give the current estimated market share.
You are right. The only problem to this is that everyone believes in a religon. Even Atheism has no proof and therefore must be based on "belief".
I submit that religon itself is not a problem. The problem comes when people base it as a sole reason for their actions, or try to force their religous belief upon someone else. Ignorance to facts that contradict your belief are ignored, factons are formed, biases are made, and wars are started. And thus, the danger.
Welcome to government of, by, and for the lawyers.
You forgot one thing: the corporations pay for the lawyers; thus it is not the government of the lawyers, but the government of, by, and for the corporation.
I think the brand is very much defined already. Let's face it, Kids are the main consumer of this type of game and I know of several demented middle schoolers who would love owning a game that has a gene that causes cancer named after it. The parents might be afraid the game could cause cancer, and that the two are linked; BUT having that fear would require the parents actually knowing which games their kids play, AND the name of that specific gene.
Then again, I am probably not giving credit too the age of media sound bytes. I can see the headlines and one liner news stations now. "A new meaning to pocket monsters; Pokemon linked with cancer! Are your kids safe? More after the break."
>>I know this was said as a joke, but I see this a lot amongst the geek community, the attitude that users just don't know what they are doing, and that is why they can't make anything work.
The reason you see it so often is because it is so true. User is a broad term, and I use it as anyone who is touching the system aside from the administrators (bosses, subordinates, that monkey down the hall). I work as a sys admin in a lab at the university I am currently attending and the worse things happen because a user thinks they know what they are doing when they don't. Here are a few of my favorite examples.
In the defense of the user, those who "know" what they are doing often makes mistakes as well. My favorite example of this is when the IT office calls and tells me that I have a virus on my webserver and it opened a port that is getting a large amount of traffic. I was told to fix the problem immediately or my port would be shut off. Naturally I asked which port... the answer? Port 80. After a short technical explaination they agreed to leave my port alone if I would at least do a scan. I scanned with a few antivirus and spyware programs as well as looked at a hijackthis log. Surprise surprise, the system was clean
> That is of course only if none of the following happened. 1. Industrial espionage. Other companies could and would steal the technology if they had the chance. 2. Reverse engineering. Ever hear of the generic brand? An invention that works is much easier to reverse engineer than an idea of an invention. Since there are no pantents to protect anyone from selling them once they figured it out this would be a thriving business. 3. You did not sell or give away the information. Once you are dying, and if you are truly proud of your invention you would release the creation details for either prestige, more money (you can never seem to have enough of that), just to be a good person, or as another post on slashdot. 4. You did not have a company. If you hand made every powercell this would be a possibility, but then lets face it. Where is the money? 5. You do not have any posterity. I highly doubt that you would not give your company to your children who would then do the same. This cycle never ends. Without patents the money made from an invention is limited, but that does not mean the invention itself would be. I agree with short term, SIMPLE patents to allow inventors a window to make enough money they will be inspired to spend more time creating more and more inventions and not having to go work in a coal mine for the rest of their life to make a living. Another thing to keep in mind is that real world life inspires better methods of doing something. It may not be a bad idea for that postman to figure out how to actually make that flying car and not be sued because someone at hollywood thought up the idea (albiet with no technical knowledge of how to do it, or even a desire to attempt to figure it out).
I have one as well. I baught a power adapter for it and had rechargeable batteries for the road. 6 could last about an hour. Just enough too get through 1 game of xmen and a level of crystal warriors.... ahh, the good old days.
> If every member of the group can't qoute monty python's: search for the holy grail. You should probably move on ;)
Sure the 8 hour introductory course is free... But how much will the 80 hour Overcoming D&D addiction course cost? Sounds a lot like legal drugs too me! Of course who am I to say anything. This is one drug I use frequently.
I'll put 100$ on the sixth of may... that is unless I'm on this secure network.
Making the general internet purely a kid friendly zone would help with many concerns parents have, but I do not believe it is going to happen. What is the likelyhood that the bad people who share unlawful or illegally copied pornography will all switch over to the xxx domain? The only real reason I see in this is to protect children from accidentally stumbling across bad things.
.xxx domain (as if you needed one), but nothing will change in the .com world. People who want too will still view porn. People who don't will still complain.
.xxx domain, we should be generating a database of "acceptable and non-questionable" stable websites that would be acceptable for general viewing. Then educate parents on how too set up firewalls to keep their minor children away from the stuff. Next we can encourage parents to spend enough time with their children they will feel confident in their childs choice in the matter.
What's my prediction if this ever gets passed you asked? You will have an easier way of finding porn for sale by searching with the
In my opinion instead of pushing the