A company exerting control over the use of its own database and resources, yeah that's pretty crappy. They should hand all their servers over to the U.N. or something and just let everyone do what they want with them. Anything less would be evil right?
her name happened to be on the cable or phone bill
And unfortunately, ISP's will have a user agreement that the stated customer is considered to have agreed to when signing up for the service, that states that anything done with the connection is the paying customer's responsibility. Doesn't matter whether the person paying is actually the one using it. I used to work for my cable ISP, in the field doing installations, and know that at least here, nobody is ever told that particular little tidbit. The company that had worked that territory before them (which I had also worked for) did actually make a point of getting a signature on a paper document that the installer would bring with him when connecting the service, and we were required to make sure they knew about it and be able to discuss its contents with them so that the understood their responsibilities. But that way of doing it stopped 5 years ago when they were bought out. The current regime does have such an agreement, but it's on a website somewhere and is not mentioned to anyone. Basically no better than a shrinkwrap EULA on software, but it can still be invoked as some kind of binding agreement somehow.
You missed the yet again on that phrase as this is not the first time their 'investigative methods' have been found sorely wanting or just non-existant. A granny with a computer already got attacked for the acts of her grandchildren; there was also that suit over an Usher.mp3 found on a college ftp server, that was actually a recording of the lecture of a Professor Usher. I'm wondering how much more of this is required before they get the discredit they are bucking for. It almost seems hopeless as they should have already been laughed out of any law office by now.
But just as Jack Thompson has proved, you don't have to have any credibility to keep going on stupid crusades.
You speak truly, for as a tech support geek one does indeed encounter the elderly on their very first flight, it does happen often enough to notice that there are still people who have never used a computer before. What is more surprising are the times when someone obviously much younger, say 30's - 40's are in that very same situation.
The last time I went to get a new video card though, about two months ago, I had a rough time getting a GeForce 6800 for AGP. The store I usually deal with had had several AGP cards in their stock when I had started thinking about getting a new card, but by the time I got around to actually going to get one, they didn't have one single AGP card in stock, regardless of manufacturer or model. I had to get them to order me one, and was told that I was lucky too because the source they ordered my BFG-made 6800 (sweet card, I love it) had the last one and weren't producing them anymore. I felt like my poor system (which is actually pretty decent for being almost 4 years old - I had a bunch of 'free money' fall on me back then and got the best money could but for home use at the time) was being left behind in the dust. Well thanks to being able to at least get ahold of one good recent-tech AGP card I now feel I won't have that upgrade urge for a few more years again. AGP still works fine.
And at the end of the day we're left with Trading Spaces on the TV and Tetris on our computers.
Hey, falling blocks don't have to have their every move planned out by some petty dictator at a game console! It's shape-ist, and it's wrong, we must ban Tetris also. And we should ban Trading Spaces just because.
let's give people a better education in how to drive
I've long felt that the criteria for getting a driver's license are far too slack. People see driving as a right though, not a priviledge, there's this attitude of entitlement. It almost seems to me like they felt the same way when they set the test conditions. You should have to pass portions of a Police driving course or somesuch, have obstacles (that can't actually hurt the car and driver) leap out unexpectedly and things like that, and other hazards too. If you can't get a really high mark on that, then sorry, I guess driving's just not for you, that's just how things go sometimes you know. I'd love to fly a plane but I never went to school for that, and don't have the time now either, so tough beans for me, and I accept that easily.
Truck drivers have more stringent passing requirements than car drivers for their licenses, though this is on the basis that they are more dangerous because of the momentum they have from their weight, as well as their sheer size and limited visibility of surrounding vehicles. I don't think that should be what requires you to be a better driver. Flying is considered one of the safest forms of travel (barring terrorists), and no shit, because pilots have to do whackloads more training than anyone else. Yeah flying a plane is way more complicated than driving a car (and driving a big rig is to some extent as well), but why do our licensing bureaus not demand skilled, well-trained drivers out there each with a couple thousand pounds of glass and other solids hurtling around through the general public?
Just because the controls of a car are easier to use and they have less net damage potential doesn't make them any less serious a responsibility to operate.
Ah, we're splitting hairs here. (I'm replying to the other respondant as well here) If I own or rent the building, I get to set the terms on what goes on inside of it. Whether the general public can walk in and out at will or not, that is part of the terms. Any number of arbitrary rules can be assigned by the owner/renter, regardless of whether there is open access to the premises or not. As to legal, if I decide that you're doing something in my house that I don't like, at any time I can decide that you are now trespassing, and now nothing you do here is legal until you have obeyed my insistance that you leave. Take all the pictures of it from the street if you want, but if I don't want you taking pictures inside my house or store, tough nuts, it's not legal for you to engage in activities that the terms of the premises do not allow, because then you become unwelcome and are therefore trespassing. Trespassing was not legal the last time I checked.
So if a friend of mine comes over to my house, and brings along someone he knows but I've never met, is no friend of mine, and that fellow has a camera with him, I should be perfectly comfortable as this stranger walks around in my house taking pictures at will? It's normal enough to have a friend-of-a-friend be welcome on your property, but I'm pretty sure he'd feel that asking permission to take pictures of my private space would be the proper thing to do, or at least I should hope so. Just because I've invited him in does not mean he will assume he can do whatever he likes there.
That would really rock, as it would require the game engine to be highly sophisticated. The player has to be able to use random elements of the environment to make bombs and other weapons, timers, communication devices, balloons, small animals, telescopes, warp drives, etc etc etc. And the game would let you Jerry-rig broken things with improbable objects that can work with enough creativity. Yeah, I actually do want to play a MacGyver MMORPG.:)
Yeah I never switch to Firefox anymore, once was enough. The same is true for most of the people I know using it. Something about switching to it that first time, they never switch to it again, I wonder what causes that. For awhile I tried downloading it from mozilla.org every time I wanted to surf, but that got tedious rapidly. I'm sorry I guess I'm just not doing my part. Hey I know, I could load up IE then close it, then load Firefox again, would that count as another switch? I promise to do it more often if it will help.
I happened to view that page at 21:34 Jan 26, and as a result cancelled my lifelong plans to start a beaver farm, and blew my life savings on beaver repellant instead, you insensitive clod!
No, you have to pay to get the Vista Virus, just like you had to pay to get the XP Virus. They throw in the IE Virus for free though, so it makes up for it.
My machine will be very secure when Vista comes out. The installer disc will remain in the shrinkwrap, still on the shelf of some store, till some other sucker buys it instead. Now that's some good security.:)
I think it might have been Adversary, before it went away and the IP address went to Medievia. Or it could have even been Temple, which was Adversary before the name change. Whichever it was, I know the IP was 129.32.32.98, but that had a couple different owners in its day. Average age was college-level as far as I could tell.
I've known a diagnosed and medicated schizophrenic as well, and he is the only person I've known that has suddenly thought D&D was real. He once attacked a couch with a lamp at a party because he thought it was an orc coming to kill him. I've known tons of D&D players in my life, none of them had mental conditions (other than depression perhaps), and none of them ever had anything like this happen to them, which is not surprising to me at all. I've been with several of those people on psychedelics even, and you still can't get something like that out of them. This guy I mention had had other episodes as well, that had no link to D&D whatsoever, but perhaps a favorite comic book, or TV show would be what he'd wind up in instead.
I've always believed that there isn't any kind of fantasy medium that makes somebody do something crazy, there are simply people that don't/can't separate it from reality when they are exposed to it.
I myself attempted this years ago, on a MUD, all text, so there wasn't even a sexy avatar to look at, just a female name. I made a cleric named Freya, and set about playing. A group found me immediately and pressed me to join, and they started loading me up with gold and equipment, and rapidly started getting me xp. All the guys (which IIRC was all of them, period) were emoting smiles and winks and whatnots at me constantly, and one even broached the subject of mud marriage, asking me if I'd heard of it. This character was less than 1 hour old at this point, and already being asked to marry?!? I had barely said two words to any of them, mainly "Thank you" for yet another pile of gold or armor or whatever. I suppose, that since I had already been given a sizeable amount of gold and equipment it was considered we had 'gotten to know each other' already. I decided to just quit out, came back in with my regular male character, and continued on able to enjoy the game once again. I've never ever bothered to try making a female character again, it's just not worth the hassle.
I've known real live female gamers that only play male characters for this very reason.
If the people who distribute it wanted to collect money for it, that would mean setting up a payment scheme, which would make it a lot easier to track them down and arrest them.
Yeah, that's how Pete Townsend was caught (says he was researching to understand his own abuse as a child), because evidently he had entered his credit card number to pay for access to a russian child porn site, one of many that exist to make money off of this stuff. There was a whole big sting involving many of these pay sites a couple years ago.
Slashdot Mirror
Cool, I want to play a 419 scammer.
A company exerting control over the use of its own database and resources, yeah that's pretty crappy. They should hand all their servers over to the U.N. or something and just let everyone do what they want with them. Anything less would be evil right?
In other news, PI has at least one more decimal place than what has previously been calculated.
Died from an infection due to gold dust?
I feel a fourth Discovery Channel documentary coming on: King Tut - Human, or Cyberman?
her name happened to be on the cable or phone bill
And unfortunately, ISP's will have a user agreement that the stated customer is considered to have agreed to when signing up for the service, that states that anything done with the connection is the paying customer's responsibility. Doesn't matter whether the person paying is actually the one using it. I used to work for my cable ISP, in the field doing installations, and know that at least here, nobody is ever told that particular little tidbit. The company that had worked that territory before them (which I had also worked for) did actually make a point of getting a signature on a paper document that the installer would bring with him when connecting the service, and we were required to make sure they knew about it and be able to discuss its contents with them so that the understood their responsibilities. But that way of doing it stopped 5 years ago when they were bought out. The current regime does have such an agreement, but it's on a website somewhere and is not mentioned to anyone. Basically no better than a shrinkwrap EULA on software, but it can still be invoked as some kind of binding agreement somehow.
has been exposed
You missed the yet again on that phrase as this is not the first time their 'investigative methods' have been found sorely wanting or just non-existant. A granny with a computer already got attacked for the acts of her grandchildren; there was also that suit over an Usher.mp3 found on a college ftp server, that was actually a recording of the lecture of a Professor Usher. I'm wondering how much more of this is required before they get the discredit they are bucking for. It almost seems hopeless as they should have already been laughed out of any law office by now.
But just as Jack Thompson has proved, you don't have to have any credibility to keep going on stupid crusades.
You speak truly, for as a tech support geek one does indeed encounter the elderly on their very first flight, it does happen often enough to notice that there are still people who have never used a computer before. What is more surprising are the times when someone obviously much younger, say 30's - 40's are in that very same situation.
The last time I went to get a new video card though, about two months ago, I had a rough time getting a GeForce 6800 for AGP. The store I usually deal with had had several AGP cards in their stock when I had started thinking about getting a new card, but by the time I got around to actually going to get one, they didn't have one single AGP card in stock, regardless of manufacturer or model. I had to get them to order me one, and was told that I was lucky too because the source they ordered my BFG-made 6800 (sweet card, I love it) had the last one and weren't producing them anymore. I felt like my poor system (which is actually pretty decent for being almost 4 years old - I had a bunch of 'free money' fall on me back then and got the best money could but for home use at the time) was being left behind in the dust. Well thanks to being able to at least get ahold of one good recent-tech AGP card I now feel I won't have that upgrade urge for a few more years again. AGP still works fine.
Dell is now selling AMD processors from its website. Go to dell.com and type AMD in the search, it's the top result.
Use my property correctly or get off it. Ie: Do it my way or be trespassing, which means you're in trouble with the law now.
And at the end of the day we're left with Trading Spaces on the TV and Tetris on our computers.
Hey, falling blocks don't have to have their every move planned out by some petty dictator at a game console! It's shape-ist, and it's wrong, we must ban Tetris also. And we should ban Trading Spaces just because.
let's give people a better education in how to drive
I've long felt that the criteria for getting a driver's license are far too slack. People see driving as a right though, not a priviledge, there's this attitude of entitlement. It almost seems to me like they felt the same way when they set the test conditions. You should have to pass portions of a Police driving course or somesuch, have obstacles (that can't actually hurt the car and driver) leap out unexpectedly and things like that, and other hazards too. If you can't get a really high mark on that, then sorry, I guess driving's just not for you, that's just how things go sometimes you know. I'd love to fly a plane but I never went to school for that, and don't have the time now either, so tough beans for me, and I accept that easily.
Truck drivers have more stringent passing requirements than car drivers for their licenses, though this is on the basis that they are more dangerous because of the momentum they have from their weight, as well as their sheer size and limited visibility of surrounding vehicles. I don't think that should be what requires you to be a better driver. Flying is considered one of the safest forms of travel (barring terrorists), and no shit, because pilots have to do whackloads more training than anyone else. Yeah flying a plane is way more complicated than driving a car (and driving a big rig is to some extent as well), but why do our licensing bureaus not demand skilled, well-trained drivers out there each with a couple thousand pounds of glass and other solids hurtling around through the general public?
Just because the controls of a car are easier to use and they have less net damage potential doesn't make them any less serious a responsibility to operate.
But I'll be a virus-infected self-driven car could get a DUI. It would be under the influence of something deleterious at any rate.
Ah, we're splitting hairs here. (I'm replying to the other respondant as well here) If I own or rent the building, I get to set the terms on what goes on inside of it. Whether the general public can walk in and out at will or not, that is part of the terms. Any number of arbitrary rules can be assigned by the owner/renter, regardless of whether there is open access to the premises or not. As to legal, if I decide that you're doing something in my house that I don't like, at any time I can decide that you are now trespassing, and now nothing you do here is legal until you have obeyed my insistance that you leave. Take all the pictures of it from the street if you want, but if I don't want you taking pictures inside my house or store, tough nuts, it's not legal for you to engage in activities that the terms of the premises do not allow, because then you become unwelcome and are therefore trespassing. Trespassing was not legal the last time I checked.
So if a friend of mine comes over to my house, and brings along someone he knows but I've never met, is no friend of mine, and that fellow has a camera with him, I should be perfectly comfortable as this stranger walks around in my house taking pictures at will? It's normal enough to have a friend-of-a-friend be welcome on your property, but I'm pretty sure he'd feel that asking permission to take pictures of my private space would be the proper thing to do, or at least I should hope so. Just because I've invited him in does not mean he will assume he can do whatever he likes there.
That would really rock, as it would require the game engine to be highly sophisticated. The player has to be able to use random elements of the environment to make bombs and other weapons, timers, communication devices, balloons, small animals, telescopes, warp drives, etc etc etc. And the game would let you Jerry-rig broken things with improbable objects that can work with enough creativity. Yeah, I actually do want to play a MacGyver MMORPG. :)
People are not switching so often to Firefox
Yeah I never switch to Firefox anymore, once was enough. The same is true for most of the people I know using it. Something about switching to it that first time, they never switch to it again, I wonder what causes that. For awhile I tried downloading it from mozilla.org every time I wanted to surf, but that got tedious rapidly. I'm sorry I guess I'm just not doing my part. Hey I know, I could load up IE then close it, then load Firefox again, would that count as another switch? I promise to do it more often if it will help.
I happened to view that page at 21:34 Jan 26, and as a result cancelled my lifelong plans to start a beaver farm, and blew my life savings on beaver repellant instead, you insensitive clod!
"Most slashdot users as well..."
Didja hear that?!? I'm a Star!!
why don't they make vista virus free?
No, you have to pay to get the Vista Virus, just like you had to pay to get the XP Virus. They throw in the IE Virus for free though, so it makes up for it.
My machine will be very secure when Vista comes out. The installer disc will remain in the shrinkwrap, still on the shelf of some store, till some other sucker buys it instead. Now that's some good security. :)
I think it might have been Adversary, before it went away and the IP address went to Medievia. Or it could have even been Temple, which was Adversary before the name change. Whichever it was, I know the IP was 129.32.32.98, but that had a couple different owners in its day. Average age was college-level as far as I could tell.
a friend who suffered from schizonphrenia
I've known a diagnosed and medicated schizophrenic as well, and he is the only person I've known that has suddenly thought D&D was real. He once attacked a couch with a lamp at a party because he thought it was an orc coming to kill him. I've known tons of D&D players in my life, none of them had mental conditions (other than depression perhaps), and none of them ever had anything like this happen to them, which is not surprising to me at all. I've been with several of those people on psychedelics even, and you still can't get something like that out of them. This guy I mention had had other episodes as well, that had no link to D&D whatsoever, but perhaps a favorite comic book, or TV show would be what he'd wind up in instead.
I've always believed that there isn't any kind of fantasy medium that makes somebody do something crazy, there are simply people that don't/can't separate it from reality when they are exposed to it.
A friend of mine tried this stint in EQ,
I myself attempted this years ago, on a MUD, all text, so there wasn't even a sexy avatar to look at, just a female name. I made a cleric named Freya, and set about playing. A group found me immediately and pressed me to join, and they started loading me up with gold and equipment, and rapidly started getting me xp. All the guys (which IIRC was all of them, period) were emoting smiles and winks and whatnots at me constantly, and one even broached the subject of mud marriage, asking me if I'd heard of it. This character was less than 1 hour old at this point, and already being asked to marry?!? I had barely said two words to any of them, mainly "Thank you" for yet another pile of gold or armor or whatever. I suppose, that since I had already been given a sizeable amount of gold and equipment it was considered we had 'gotten to know each other' already. I decided to just quit out, came back in with my regular male character, and continued on able to enjoy the game once again. I've never ever bothered to try making a female character again, it's just not worth the hassle.
I've known real live female gamers that only play male characters for this very reason.
If the people who distribute it wanted to collect money for it, that would mean setting up a payment scheme, which would make it a lot easier to track them down and arrest them.
Yeah, that's how Pete Townsend was caught (says he was researching to understand his own abuse as a child), because evidently he had entered his credit card number to pay for access to a russian child porn site, one of many that exist to make money off of this stuff. There was a whole big sting involving many of these pay sites a couple years ago.