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Slashback: Duality, Mosaic, G-Men 103

Posted by timothy from the swd-seeks-soulmate dept.
It's backpedaling time when it comes to the alleged Sega / Nintendo joint venture ... just goes to show how easy it is to get signals crossed in a business where no fact is necessarily stranger than fiction. Words from our recent FBI visitee. More Lego madness too, combining modern technology with that funny smile that haunts even we scoffers. All below -- smile!

It was still an interesting concept, though. Gemini writes: "Just thought I'd let you know IGN made an error regarding Sega and Nintendo forming a joint company. Their retraction is [here]"

Tenryujin adds: "IGN DC reported that Sega has not stated that they will be developing software for rival consoles. They also have already stated in the past that their next generation console beyond the Dreamcast is already in development (as I'm sure Sony's hard at work on their PlayStation 3), but that's far in the future. "shifting focus" and "moving away completely" are two entirely different things. :)

Nowhere have they announced that they are getting out of the hardware business. This time next year, we'll have X-Box, PlayStation 2, Indrema, Gamecube and Dreamcast."

Marge, your child is so artistic. Keep him away from my family. You've seen a massive lego train layout, and you've seen the lego desk, but are you ready for ... something more inspiring and enigmatic? Eric Harshbarger, reknowned sculptor of the Lego Desk is at it again. He circulated an e-mail saying, "... I have finally finished the 'LEGO Mona Lisa'. It is viewable at: [this link] whew..." Yow. If you are anywhere near Auburn, Ala. this week, perhaps a polite e-mail to Eric will let get you a close-up look, but he will be packing it up this weekend (Nov. 5th).

The mind boggles.

And the fastest update in the West -- hwaara writes: "The guy who got ruined by FBI has updated his page with answers to common questions by Slashdot readers, check it out here." That includes questions like: 'What the heck were you doing visiting a just cracked site and port-scanning?!' to which Andreas has some pointed words.

Thinking (witch) caps for next year ... Karl writes "Halloween: the perfect opportunity to share the software. Instead of handing-out shrink-wrapped candy, give out the ole' stack of Debian GNU/Linux CD's when those trick-or-treaters ring at the door. The implications and possibilities are endless. If anyone wants to be part of this GNU/Linux Halloween give-away distribution rampage, please e-mail me. I'll probe all sorts of sponsors and get the CD's to give out in 2001. We can print CD labels that have helpful URLs, or LUG URLs and stick them to the CDs. E-mail me with any enthusiasm, ideas, or comments: your input will steer the project. (NOSPAM: karl-at-tux.org)"

This sounds like a great idea to me. Save up all those nice boxes that America Online has been spamming you with, remove the inner label, and re-use. ;)
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Slashback: Duality More

Slashback: Duality

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  • Everyone knows which houses give out good-for-you crap, and avoid them if at all possible... then there are the Dentist's houses that no one goes within a mile of.... Imagine the distances people would go to avoid the "Geek".... hey, do that next year, and all following years you'll be sure to have all that candy you buy to yourself the next day!

    And can you see what will happen next?... I've heard of parent groups going nuts over people who give out apples and such (There could be a thermonuclear device hidden in there! Think about the children!), now you'll have activist groups on your door thinking you're trying to spread satanic software and trying to corrupt computers and children... afterall, to any good Parents Church Group (TM), Windows is the OS of God :-P

  • So lemme get this straight, you are suggest you combine:

    Children + Sugar = Hyper Then Hyper + Open Source....

    Oh boy, there goes the neighborhood... Next thing you know, KDE will be sporting a lovely new "aKtive DEsktop" or worse yet, be renaming itself KDE.NET.

    On the other hand, this may explain the latest Red Hat release....

    "Gee folks, we here at Red Hat are really sorry about all those darned bugs in our latest release. What can I say, other than we here learned that our maximum limit is 43 snickers and 3 boxes of Ju Ju Be's"
  • gov't raids have a history of taking coffee pots. (http://www.sjgames.com/SS/) I think it's a conspiracy. Anyone remember the Steve Jackson Games raid back in 1990? (US Secret Service--not FBI http://www.sjgames.com/SS/topten.html )

    I think SJG finally got their coffee make back, but it was after this caused the formation of the EFF and the lawsuit against the govt was settled.

    (eyes roll)

  • The laws of physics do not apply to the internet. (Score:4)

    by rigau ( 122636 ) on Wednesday November 01, 2000 @05:36PM (#656385)
    Many murder scene analogies have been made, but they have all been flawed, in my opinion, for one reason: the laws of physics do not apply to the internet.

    We all wish that the pesky laws of physics did not restrain the internet however they do. Probably what you mean by this is that the landscape of the internet is diferent from the one of the real world and that the murder scene analogy breaks down in some instances.

    It is interesting though that you say that the murder scene analogy doesnt work and then you try to use it.

    People will gawk at a murder scene.

    Sure and people stop trafic to look at car accidents. The problem is that they way you fiddled around the website made you a suspect. The problem is that while this might be a regular reaction (to stop and look) it might not be the smartest thing to do (which is what people were trying to tell you, not that it is "unnatural" to do what you did)

    I just telnetted to them, without knowing if they were even open or not

    Oh come on telneting to a website is not exactly looking at the crime scene. It is definitely more involved than that. Basically you began to mess around with a website that had been compromised? Something very similar to messing around with a crime scene. No?

    So, the police show up, and I'm standing over a broken window.

    It more like you are leaving the house as the police come and then you try to explain to them that yes you were in the crime scene but only out of pure curiousity and that they should let you go because you clearly didnt do it even though you do have a gun of similar make as the murder weapon.

    I get carted to the police station, get questioned for a couple hours, and they let me go. However, In this circumstance, they stuck me in a squad car, and while they were questioning me, they searched my house.

    If you or your finger prints were found in a crime scene you can be sure they are not just going to question you for a couple of hours and then let you go. You better get your sorry ass a lawyer or you are going to be detained for a long long time.

    On an aside note.

    On the internet, everyone is your neighbor.

    Speaking of bad analogies... Nope in the internet everyone isnt your neghbor annymore than in the real world. The truth is that in the internet we can theoretically move at the speed that electricity moves so while everyone isnt our neighbor we do have an increased ability to see people who live far away.

  • Dude didnt trample over crime scene (Score:3)

    by Rev. DeFiLEZ ( 203323 ) on Wednesday November 01, 2000 @04:34PM (#656386) Homepage
    some key points never made.
    he stated it was a DNS hack.
    - he port scanned www.yankees.com
    - he connected to www.yankees.com:21 and 80.
    he didnt connect to the yankees server. he connected to the crackers server that the DNS now pointed to.
    - his only real mistake was connecting to old.yankees.com

    -rev

  • See, Slashdot carries up to date news! (Score:5)

    by roystgnr ( 4015 ) <roy&stogners,org> on Wednesday November 01, 2000 @05:52PM (#656387) Homepage
    Look! They've got a Halloween story, a full 364 days before halloween!
  • Man, kids these days TP the houses of those losers who hand out apples instead of candy. They'd probably light fire to your propane tank for handing them a linux CD.

    Imagine what they'd do if you gave them AOL CDs.

    :-)

  • Then you can give out free T-shirts :)

  • Yes we are all neighbours on the net, if I see my neighbour has left a window open, I let him/her know.

    That said certain behaviour is ok amongst friends but not strangers.

    It's still rude for strangers to go walking around your house and checking if _all_ your windows are shut properly. Even if they think it's for your own good. However it's ok, for strangers in your shop, to point out if something seems to be wrong.

    It's unwise and extremely impolite for strangers to lock your front door if they find it left open. Because you may have intentionally left it open, and you are now locked out!

    If your well meaning friends lock you out, you can all have a good laugh about it later, but strangers shouldn't do that.

    True the line is fuzzy between polite and rude. I might be one of those nosy neighbours who people grumble about, but so far all their thanks seem genuine when I tell em their door is wide open :).

    The penalties for being too nosy should not be so harsh, especially if there was no malicious intent.

    Too bad most judges and legal people have no clue on what acceptable normal behaviour is on various parts of the Net. They should ask people who do know, if not justice will be ill-served.

    Cheerio,
    Link.
  • Let us raise taxes so we can pay people to play with legos instead of letting you finance a home or send your kids to college with your money.

    No need for that, just get your "gummint" to spend it more wisely. (Aka. "you have spent how many trillion building nuclear weapons you know you won't use?")

    Also I seem to have read somewhere that the U.S. Government - and other administrative bodies down the line - use a much higher percentage on pure administering (aka. themselves) than e.g. European governments. Time to look at the system?

  • This is as bad as handing out christian literature on haloween. Children do not want this. Halloween is not about spreading alternative software propaganda! It's about candy, damn it :) .. this is what kids spend hours on the asphalt for.
  • Yeah, and where's slackware? ;-)
    Or is that what the rock is for.... hmmmm...
    Dammit, I know everybody tells me that slackware isn't very good, but you know what they say... "Like a rock"...

  • Yes, Really. Really Patented. (Score:4)

    by Bazzargh ( 39195 ) on Thursday November 02, 2000 @02:31AM (#656394)
    Actually that idea IS patented. Its #US6137498. (http://www.delphion.com/details?&pn=US06137498__)
    See http://photomosaic.com/p/about.htm for the guy who did it first.

    I think this got coverage in earlier /. articles.
  • Government has no business subsidizing the arts.

    You say that will lead to corporate-approved pablum, to the domination of vapid boy groups and perky teen girl solo acts churning out mindless cookie-cutter dreck? That's odd...my musical interests are fairly obscure: I like early music. Ask the average guy on the street what his favorite Machaut virelai is and you'll probably get a blank look. For a long time I had to keep an eye out at the record stores and snatch up what few discs I happened across because they weren't all that common. Funny, but nowadays there's a quarterly magazine in the bookstores down the street about nothing but early music ( Early Music America [earlymusic.org]; check it out--anybody whose phone number is 1-888-SACKBUT has won my affection :-), and a bunch of others only a little harder to get to. Those same bookstores feature enough early music CDs that I can easily spend way too much money on them. Look for early music resources on the web and you'll find enough to keep you busy for a LONG time (it's not all stuffy either; check out Bang Lassies [geocities.com]). How can this be? I thought that commercial art was doomed to pander to the lowest common denominator, and that we need a panel of judges unsullied by the market to hand out government-seized money to their friends--er, to fund high art.

    I think it's great that, for example, musicians are starting to get out from under the thumbs of the record companies--I support PatroNet [patronet.com] and November Project [novemberproject.com]--but I don't think that government coercion is necessary to encourage what I think is great art.

  • I oppose the seizure of my money by the government for any purpose, much less subsidizing artists, but I can't agree with the "artists don't need to get paid; they'll do their thing anyway." The analogy to professional programmers doing Open Source on the side is bogus--when musicians et al. talk about their "day jobs," they are not talking about, say, acting in a soap opera by day and then heading out at night to do Shakespeare or Beckett. You have the luxury of getting paid to hone your chops--flipping burgers or waiting tables doesn't replace Hanon.

  • How about the Lego "Dysons Sphere" model. 166 trillon pieces. Complete with a little spaceship crashed on the surface, and a model Scotty waving.

    Hmm, not enough caffene on board yet...

    ~Sean

  • Fuck off nigger.
  • You just wish you could be me don't you? You even took a name similar to mine. Would it make you happy if I let your girlfriend suck me off and tell you what it was like? That's as close as you'll ever get to being me.

    LK
  • I don't want to be like you, you're a fucking nigger, a no good nigger (aren't they all). BTW, Bush paid for an illegal abortion!

    I want to be nothing like your nigger ass, I just want you to see that a nigger like you does not belong on the white slashdot!
  • You're dying to be me. You even want my name. I'm sure that you'd love to have a big penis like me too. Your continued impersonation of me and the fact that you are compelled to read and respond to all of my messages are proof of that.
  • I don't want to be like you, why would I want to be a nigger? I bet you take it up the ass!

    And so nigger, how do you respond to George W. Bush paying for an illegal abortion eh? He's a fucking murderer and a DRUNK. I bet you've taken it up the ass from him too!
  • You tell me why you're so obsessed with me. I have no idea why you are.
  • No obsession with you, what's your obsession with the Republican Party? George Bush murdered a baby through abortion and is a DRUNK.
  • Check this out-

    http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/11/07/223 0216&cid=7
  • Have you seen the kids these days? Even though I'm 25, I'm starting to feel old. I've seen one that was as good as I was after I mentored him for 6 months.. and he was still in high school!
  • What a clever idea! I'm sure nobody else would have thought of that. Have you thought about patenting that idea?

  • What does this have to do with WIPO?

    Nothing.

    mmmm... I love dots [jraxis.org].

  • Re:Trick or treat! (Score:5)

    by Twilight1 ( 17879 ) <pda@procyon.com> on Wednesday November 01, 2000 @04:46PM (#656409)
    "I got a Red Hat Linux CD!"

    "I got a Debian Linux CD!"

    "Well, I got a SuSE Linux CD!"

    "And I got a Mandrake Linux CD!"

    "I got a rock..."
  • Erm... Legos come actually from Denmark.

  • Sorry. (Score:1)

    by HEbGb ( 6544 )
    I'm a fan of art, and I very much enjoy visiting galleries to see people's creations.

    HOWEVER, the government has no business demanding money from people to fund artistic endeavors. I am more than happy to pay for entrance to an art exhibit, and, if I have the financial means someday, I would consider sponsoring individual artists whose art I value.

    But having the government literally point a gun to my head, and demand that I hand over money to fund artists in the mission of a 'promise of tomorrow' absolutely disgusts me, as do those people who attempt to convince us that it's the morally correct thing to do.

    It's time to re-think those moral priorities, my friend. Would you steal to support art? Would you mug? No? Then why are you asking the government to?
  • Personally...I am not offended if someone does a scan of my system because i scan other peoples systems (my friends included) just to see what is out there. I mean, why implement wonderful things like FIN and SYN into the RFC if they weren't meant to be used. But do I continue once I gain access of any kind? Of course not. Just because someone's front door to their house is unlocked doesnt give you permission to enter. Most of the time I will just email the admin(most of the times a friend) and let them know they have a security hole that needs to be fixed. So many times I have scanned systems and see silly mistakes like having X listen on port 6000, or leaving netstat or sysstat running on some 500 port which could be a possible security risk. Internet security shouldn't be taken lightly, alot of people in this world see it as a challenge and therefore their ethics are skewed and have no problem turning your semi-secure system into a /dev/null.
  • I totally agree, I'm one of those people. I knew about linux, new approximatly where to get it, but never did anything about it until I had the CDs placed in my hand. This was almost 3 years ago. I've now got a 3 machine network, all running linux, use linux at work, and advocate linux where appropriate (eg, work:). In fact, my linux/unix skills (I was a Solaris sysadmin for a while last year) helped get me from New Zealand to Canada. All thanks to a workmate handing me the Dec 96 Infomagic Linux Developer's Resource (6 cd set).

    Just think: handing a kid a linux cd could change his life forever (of course, most of them will probably play frisbee).

    Bill - aka taniwha
    --

  • Handing out cds for Hallween is a marvelous idea. If I knew people were handing out linux cds I would have gone trick or treating. /.er's should just declare their own Halloween holiday where instead of candy hand out linux cds. What would we call it? And what would we say in place of "trick or treat"?
  • Frankly, free software could use a lot more skateboard-style marketing (which it does have some of right now) -- stickers in odd places are a good start;), a Halloween distro would be great.

    It should have lots of things kids would like:
    o Games
    - hangman
    - tuxracer!
    - Xbill
    o Painting things
    - GIMP
    - Sketch / Killustrator (wish they had better interfaces ...)

    Also, things parents would like, like Koffice, Gnumeric, etc.

    Even (dare I say it) teachers -- like learn-a-language programs, kid-level programming tools like logo, typing tutorials.

    Coming up with enough copies sounds hard, but needn't be ...

    Even if it's a slightly out of date demo, so what? At LWCE in San Jose, we gave away 5,000 boxes of Debian, with O'reilly book in each. Probably there are distributors who will be willing to donate what are to them "the old versions" ...

    And by halloween next year (I hope! ;) ) that will also mean the 2.4 kernel etc ... with a CD burner and the cost of blanks, it could be cheaper than giving out Hershey bars. (Well, the regular size ones, anyhow.)

    Someone could make a logo with a nice spooky tux, and / or a jack-o-tux, and / or the usual tux shape but draped over by a sheet with eyeholes ...

    And companies could all contribute nicely -- most companies have an all-GPL, one-disk edition anyhow. They could share a common logo / package scheme, just with a note that identifies the specific distro on the disk.

    Something like:

    "Halloween 2001: A New Era!
    All treats are tricky.
    this disc featuring
    Linux Mandrake 7.4,
    with kernel 2.4.12
    All software on this disk
    is distributed under the
    terms of the GNU GPL.
    For More information
    check out www.tux.org!"
    "
    A small pamphlet with some FSF information, maybe, too ...

    This is one of the greatest ideas I've heard in a while. I mean, there is a cultural precedent one night a year of giving away things like at a trade show, but to kids ;)

    Let's do it!

    timothy
  • I'd have to say this makes more sense than anything i read in the orrigional post. I never saw that mentioned once(doesn't mean its not there, i miss alot of stuff).
  • No computer criminal can operate without coffee. Caffiene is the first necessary component to breaking networks. They probably searched for penguin mints as well. Come on, you people all run around with caffiene molecule t-shirts...you should know this.
  • Just in case anyone's confused... They didn't really take his coffee maker. It was part of the analogy.
  • Why they took the novel? Because they knew you were reading it. They don't read but nothing is good like hassle you for a while... After questioning you would come home, have a cold shower, kick your comp and get THAT novel... :)

    Why they took your clothes. All your clothes? Well they also surely know that you are not a MTV fan. So you barely risk to go on the streets advertising the "GET NAKED!.." Beavies & ButtHeads of generation Next. Much simpler than saying "...don't leave the town."

    The coofee maker. Man when you ever seen a working coofee maker on a police station? Yeah they will say it's evidence. "Are you sure you locked the door when you left? You were handcuffed..." Or to analyse your fingerprints, your friends fingerprints, your girlfriend's fingerprints, your parents fingerprint's, your neighbor's fingerprints. Anyway most fingerprints will be of those who came to get you... As, after some long hours, anyone wants a good cup of coofee. :)
  • The label should look like a pumpkin with the word Linux carved as the mouth. Orange and black.

    Should include an easy to install Windows compatible version like Winlinux 2000.

  • I praise God almost every day for what he has provided me. My life truely has been a testament to his power.
  • ...grapefruit, I believe.

    I was happy to see Storm which tasted like Sprite, but was caffinated. Then I notice they changed their label - no more zip. Darn.

  • That definitely should solve the overpopulation-problem. Why conquer space if you can rebuild it?
  • Too bad most judges and legal people have no clue on what acceptable normal behaviour is on various parts of the Net. They should ask people who do know, if not justice will be ill-served.

    Why don't you run for judge? You have my vote. Not that that matters...

  • Another slashback (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hey folks, that potato is finally out of my anus. Thanks for all the suggestions.

    Sincerely,
    Bill Gates (this is NOT a hoax, btw)

  • lego (Score:1)

    by ryusen ( 245792 )
    lego got too expensive once i had ot pay for it with my own allowance... last thing i remember building, like 15 years ago, was a klingon battle cruiser(the d-7 type... not the wimpy "bird of pray") still have it in fact.. dunno what happened to the rest of my lego though
  • (Re: Debian CDs).

    This is the second story in a row that has refered to Halloween as though it was still in the future

    Hey guys, pay attention to your calendar, Halloween was yesterday! This would have been a good story to post yesterday, and or maybe 11 months from now, but isn't it kind of fscking pointless today?
  • That sounds whack!

    I think it would be a better idea to give the parents that accompany the kids the CDs. 7 year olds want candy, not pennies or Linux CDs. C'mon.

    23
  • A true nerd would have built a robot to assemble that mosaic.

  • Re:Giving kids Linux CD's? (Score:3)

    by 11thangel ( 103409 ) on Wednesday November 01, 2000 @04:14PM (#656430) Homepage
    On the contrary, some kids love it. At a local business expo, I had a linux stand going. We were playing xbill and a tetris clone when some 8 year olds walked by, and said "Mommy, mommy, lets buy LINUX!". I think the only thing funnier was the look on the face of the @home guy when he found out he was trying to install a cable modem into vmware.
  • I'm going to check their halloween bags and make sure someone hasn't slipped them a copy of win9x...

    - [grunby]
  • The lego models keep getting bigger. Some day i'll finish my full scale model of Earth. I may need a bigger box...
  • Why not give them a copy of "The Watchtower"? I think this kind of prolestysizing is only going to give the community a bad name. Your house would probably be buried under a mountain of t.p. if you gave out Debian CDs.
  • Read: I'll probe all sorts of sponsors and get the CD's to give out in 2001.

    They're talking about *next* year's Halloween, not this year.
    ---
  • *sigh* you really should quit worryin about artists not getting paid. hardly 1% of the current band of opensource programmers are getting paid for their work (lets face it - more than 99% of the projects that show up on freshmeat are written by programmers who like programming - not people getting paid in any form). heck, i get paid to code and i still do most of my work on the side and release it for free. its the same for artists musicians etc. they'll code/draw/paint/sing because they LIKE doing it. its better if you get paid but its not all that important.
    a better solution is to give people resources rather than cash -- something like sourceforge/freshmeat are valued far more than cash to ANY programmer and stuff like artists studios open to anyone are valued far more by the artistic community than a few million dollar plus funded artistic projects or code.
  • Man, kids these days TP the houses of those losers who hand out apples instead of candy. They'd probably light fire to your propane tank for handing them a linux CD.

    What's more, I can't think of a single scenario in which someone would install an operating system given out for free to their kids. If they know enough about computers to install Linux, they already know where to get it themselves.

    Although, it does add an interesting new angle: While you're busy checking for syringes in the apples and poison in the poorly-wrapped treats, you'll also need a virus scan for all the software the kiddies bring back.
    ---
  • I agree, but one idea that I'd like to see would be that when copyrights are registered some of the money goes to the creation of public domain art.

    (and of course, I've got no problem with art as a part of a building project, memorial statuary, etc. but that's not really the same as the NEA)

  • We gave out halloween styled pencils. All the kids really liked them. Although, I did give out linux CDs when I was on vacation. Any B&B owner that had a computer was given a linux CD with the URLs of several common sites, plus the web page for a LUG in their area. I wouldn't give out CDs to little kids for halloween, but if any teenagers wanted them, that wouldn't be a bad idea.

  • Anne Marie (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The greatest single argument in favor of a selective poster ignore feature.
  • I thought 'l337 h4x0rs' got all their caffeine from Mountain Dew.

    Not up north. Health Canada has rules that say cirtus pops like Sprite and Mountain Dew can't have added caffine.
  • C'mon, folks. It seems pretty obvious that Anne Marie is pulling your leg.

    Right, Anne Marie?

  • Damnit, this I didn't want to know!

    I'm a software and algorithm designer, C++ programmer and graphic artist (makes consulting between programming jobs easy... and alleviates burnout) and I Drink Diet Mountain Dew on those 30+ hour marathon coding sessions. At least, until I go into caffine induced shakes...

    Why'd you have to tell me that the 'l337 h4x0rz' share my taste in beverages?
  • Or political position statements! Or anti-technology diatribes!

    *rolls eyes*
    --

  • Actually, he used his own Java program called Pixelego [ericharshbarger.org].
  • In the Mona Lisa photo, in the upper right corner, part of another lego sculpture can be seen. Anyone who has seen Princess Mononoke will recognize San, the title character, by the dagger, cloth "boots," and skirt. And that in-progress mass of white lego behind her? Moro the wolf god?
    I was wondering how he would handle her face though, with such blocky lego bricks. But then I realized he could just sculpt her wearing that freaky mask of hers.

    -SPIM

    If once a man indulges himself in First Posts,
    very soon he comes to think little of Beowulf Clusters;
    and from Natalie Portman he next comes
    to Nude Statues and Petrification,
    and from that to Pouring Hot Grits Down His Pants.

  • Lego creations (Score:4)

    by ptbrown ( 79745 ) on Wednesday November 01, 2000 @10:26PM (#656446)
    It's the Mona Lisa, big whoop. Now making a lego sculpture of an evil lord of darkness [rit.edu], now that's something.

  • when someone finally builds a lego Piss Christ?
    Ooo, I'd like to see one of those. How much would it take to commission a peice like that? (BTW: Wasn't it Pist Christ?)
  • >And what would we say in place of "trick or treat"?

    FUD or treat, ofcourse..

    //rdj
  • The fingerprints analogy is bad. Real world fingerprints aren't timestamped, so the police have no idea whether you were there before, during or after the break-in, hust that you were there.

    If someone at the FBI had done the five minutes research that this evil criminal did, they would know better what they were looking for, and would not be confiscating the computer of someone who dared to connect to a privately owned but publicly accessible DNS server.

    --
  • And that in-progress mass of white lego behind her? Moro the wolf god?

    More likely, the mass of white bricks is the fur cape she wears.

    Which leads one to wonder: is PETA going to storm the studio and relentlessly attach red lego bricks to the sculpture?
    ----------
  • I happen to give out bologna. I'm odd, no doubt. This would work out great for me, just get a bunch of those 2 CD cases, cut a hole in the middle of the bologna slices and give it out. Each case would hove a CD and a delicious treat!

    --
  • It was a Model 2 Terminal. [iinet.net.au] Lucky they missed the Model 3 Terminal (The Waffle Iron)
  • The most powerful tool you can have when Feds show up at your door (in addition to innocence) is a knowledge of the applicable laws.

    When I had two BATF agents show up at my door because they were investigating some false report that they'd gotten about me. I was quick to proclaim my innocence and quote laws to them. Their entire demeanor changed immediately when I quoted the first law to them. When I said "According to the Gun Control Act of 1968....." you should have seen the looks on their faces.

    I have very little knowledge of "cybercrime" laws on the books, so I'd be out in the cold if I was accused of violating one of them. However, if you're a computer security professional, and you visit sites related of that nature, it might be in your best interest to familiarize yourself with those laws.

    LK
  • It was an analogy. He said "novel" to represent code he had written, and "coffee maker" to represent the books they took - which were just regular, published admin books which presumably they could BUY a copy of if they wanted, but no.

    And I DO remember the SJ raid. It almost put him under, and i almost had to weep. I love Steve Jackson!
  • If they know enough about computers to install Linux, they already know where to get it themselves.

    I almost want to have extra Linux CD's lying around so I can give them to people. I had someone this summer ask me for some CD's and I was going to give him a Mandrake set because I had a newer version, but they were at home. Sometimes people don't want to pay for a box set and don't have the bandwidth to download to ISO or a CD burner to burn the ISO.
  • the assumption that DC is going to be in business next halloween. are you willing to risk it?
  • afterall, to any good Parents Church Group (TM), Windows is the OS of God

    Hmm... Could this mean that Oliver Stone predicted the future with Wild Palms' "Church Windows" show?

    Hmm...

    I support the EFF [eff.org] - do you?
  • Halloween is in the future. This story just got posted 363 days too early.

    Get over it.


    --

  • But HeUnique posts another "Halloween Document", which turns out to be a piece of satire. Everyone erupts into anger about Microsoft, and then later claims that they knew it was a hoax all along.

    Film at 11.

    Is there a retraction coming? By any chance?

    ---
    What do I do, when it seems I relate to Judas more than You?

  • Re:i have to wonder (Score:3)

    by bellings ( 137948 ) on Wednesday November 01, 2000 @04:22PM (#656460)
    Just like you don't go breaking into a TV station to see how it works, you shouldn't go sneaking into people's sites to see how they work. It's exactly the same!

    I couldn't agree more. And if you get cable, you shouldn't be looking at the scrambled stations, just to see if you can catch a glimpse of a boob. You will go to hell if you do that -- that boob is the intellectual property of the broadcasting station, and they wouldn't just broadcast it out to everyone. No, its a tightly controlled encrypted intellectual property boob, not to be reverse engineered or decrypted in any way, shape, or form, without the prior written consent of the intellectual property owner.

    If you wouldn't just go look at a boob on tv, what makes you think you can look at other stuff in other places? No-one is giving you the right to just look around at stuff. Didn't you learn not to be curious about boobs and computers and all that other bad stuff in kindergarten? I sure did. Thats why I'm not going to hell, and you are.

  • WTF? Coffee maker? (Score:4)

    by HerrNewton ( 39310 ) <thoiigd3pn5p2500 ... il.com minus bsd> on Wednesday November 01, 2000 @04:22PM (#656461) Homepage
    The FBI confiscated the guy's coffee maker? Now I know that IP-enabled appliances are the thing of the future but it's not here yet. What are they trying to do, deprive him of his '1337 hax0r c0ff33 m@k3r' so he doesn't have the caffeine needed to "0wn y0u d00dz"?

    ----
  • I'm not sure if this is the way the guy actually did it, but, with an image-editing program program like Photoshop or the GIMP, you can map any image to an arbitrary palette -- in this case, the "six basic colors" of Legos.

    Then, all you need is discipline and enough bricks to map every pixel to a brick of the appropriate color. With dithering, and using a sufficient number of bricks, you can replicate pretty much any image.

  • The guy who made the Mona Lisa mosaic also made a 3 dimensional Tux model which looks pretty nice:

    http://www.ericharshbarger.org/ leg o/penguin.html [ericharshbarger.org]
  • "K5 this." "K5 that." "This was already on K5" Blah blah blah. Particularly, in the discussion on the poor kid who got raided by the FBI for port scanning, it's like, hey, quit with all the handy K5 links already.

  • Bill is right (Score:3)

    by CodeMunch ( 95290 ) on Wednesday November 01, 2000 @04:26PM (#656465) Homepage
    In reality, there just are not that many skilled programmers willing to work for free.

    He's right. There are lots of unskilled programmers getting paid working for him. ;)

    just kidding dammit!

    --Clay

  • Possibly. You never know on the Internet. Making $70/hr usually isn't a good judge of expertise. Neither is being published in my field of work, or being a recognized leader in what I do. Of course, I'm sure that responding to a troll in a public forum doesn't help any.
  • Fricken book, but they took his fricken COFFEE POT?

    In God's name, what sort of cybercrime 'evidence' is a coffee pot?

    " He must be guitly, those Starbuck's junkies are just plain trouble."
  • What a strange thing to take. Do you suppose that you could make a donut with a coffee maker?

  • write your congresspersons and support funding for the arts.

    Let us raise taxes so we can pay people to play with legos instead of letting you finance a home or send your kids to college with your money.

  • I am not surprised that the FBI took his computers and books. I am suprised that they didn't take his clock radio or coffee maker. I mean god knows he may have bluetoothed them and will be able to hack Juan Valdez's website with his Braun expresso maker. First links are under fire in the alt.2600 case and now it is suspicious to telnet to port 80. What is next? You turn your computer on and you of violating EULA's becuase Windows is absent? Sheese
  • Anne Marie wrote:
    How many other lego scuplters would our nation produce if we were more liberal with funding for the arts? How many nascent artists, how many little Erics, are picking through their lego tubs, searching for that flat 3x1 piece, but more importantly, searching for a nation who would see their promise and help them deliver?
    Why should I care how many more lego artists could thrive if our nation decided it knew better than I do what my money (and yes, my tax dollars fund the NEA)? I think the Lego Desk (and Mona Lisa, etc.) are wonderful, but that's where my appreciation stops. The current situation, where an e-commerce company (or a programmer, in the Mona Lisa's case) funds these frivolous projects, seems fine to me. And as for your final line (partially quoted):
    It's imperative that the promise of tomorrow doesn't get squashed [...]
    I sincerely hope you were being facetious when you wrote the above line. Even if all people did was worthwhile (which is a stretch in itself), nearly none of it deserves to be funded by the public. Redistribution of wealth by the government for social purposes (whether to cure social "ills" or to fund Lego artists) is unjust.
  • ... that boob is the intellectual property of the broadcasting station ...

    I'm outraged!! The fact that the person to whom that boob is attached does not own the IP and/or the patent for the "combination sexual enhancement/infant nourishment device" is more evidence that the RIAA and MPAA are trampling our rights!! Why is this not front-page news?!?!

    -jdm

  • Redistribution of wealth by the government for the benefit of the public is not a major issue facing the United States; one of our greatest problems is redistribution of wealth by the government for <a href="http://votenader.org/issues/corp_welfare.htm l">private profit</a>.
  • Being a software engineer whose stomach can't handle coffee, I drink nearly a half dozen cans of regular Mountain Dew, every day. It's an interesting mix of carbonated water, corn syrup, tangerine juice, and caffeine. Oh yeah, and neon green coloring. And no, it doesn't shrink your testicles. I can't believe I'm posting this...

    --brian

  • Did I word that badly or something? A lot of people seem to have gotten that impression..
  • Is Linus out waiting for the Great Pumpkin?

    ---
  • How many other lego scuplters would our nation produce if we were more liberal with funding for the arts?
    We have real problems far more deserving of our tax dollars than a paucity of lego sculptors.
  • Hypothetical situation: I'm a wealthy individual and I'm hiring artists to create works for me. I pay these artists a stipend for the duration of their productivity and my pleasure with their produce. If Piss Christ or Jeff Koonts' hello-look-it's-a-vacuum-cleaner-in-Lexan artwork comes along, I get a little irate. "What the hell are you doing?" I cry. "That's not what I want to see. I want to see things which inspire."

    Nobody (nobody sane, at least) can give serious objection to this. It's my money. They're working on my behalf. Therefore, what they produce had better live up to my expectations or else I'm going to terminate my support for them.

    Now apply the same thing to a government "of the people, by the people". Ought the people really be expected to subsidize art which the majority of them, as represented by their elected officials, find to be deeply offensive? By the same logic, the answer is no, they ought not. This isn't a free speech issue; this is a public funding issue.

    There are certain things which are undoubtedly taboo for public funding. A painting portraying Christ's ascension into Heaven, surrounded by his disciples, would likely be considered to be a violation of the separation of church and state. So why is it that art which defames religion, such as Piss Christ (a piece of "art" which consists of a Mason jar filled with urine, with a crucifix floating in it), is not considered to be equally egregious? Defaming religion with public funds ought to be just as taboo as glorifying religion with public funds.

    The other problem with introducing "shock art", for lack of a better term, is that it distracts people from the real debate. Of all the NEA monies disbursed to artists, less than one percent goes to fund such extremely poor-taste pursuits. For every Oh-look-I'm-having-sex-with-my-Italian-pornstar-wi fe piece of "art", there are a hundred other pieces of art which aspire to something greater, to making some statement about the human condition.

    The evisceration of the NEA in recent years is just something I have a hard time understanding. Its budget is miniscule; there's no way the deficit will be balanced by breaking the NEA. The amount of public funds which go to these "shock artists" is infinitesimal, less than one percent of the NEA's already microscopic budget.

    So why is it Piss Christ has become a rallying cry for increasing NEA funding?

    Shouldn't we, instead, be pushing for more NEA funding because it goes to produce the sculptures you find in hospital waiting rooms--the odd piece of abstract sculpture that's in the city park--pays for the public showings at galleries?

    (Oh, and by the way, I'm a Republican. *g*)
  • Military spending: $280 billion
    General government, enforcement and administration: $36 billion

    Social Security, Medicare, and other retirement: $650 billion
    Net interest: $243 billion
    Physical, human and community development: $144 billion
    Social programs: $303 billion

    Total spending: $1,683 billion
    Percentage spent on administration: 2.14%
    Miltary: 16.7%
    Interest on debt: 14.4%
    Stuff the federal government has no Constitutionally permitted business in + pork projects: 65.2%

    you have spent how many trillion building nuclear weapons you know you won't use?

    The whole reason why they'll never be used is because they're there. Nobody would dare attack us because they would see a massive amount of retaliation from us. You wouldn't go to a gun show to mug someone, would you?

  • Re:WTF? Coffee maker? (Score:3)

    by sulli ( 195030 ) on Wednesday November 01, 2000 @04:30PM (#656482) Journal
    No, they've just familiarized themselves with RFC 2324! [ietf.org]

  • Harshbarger's lucky; can all artists be? (Score:3)

    by Anne Marie ( 239347 ) on Wednesday November 01, 2000 @04:30PM (#656483)
    Harshbarger's Mona Lisa was commissioned [wirednews.com] by Dave Michelson, a programmer who's bought several of Eric's other works. And it's really wonderful to see the ancient practice of artistic patronage by the wealthy paying off in this 21st century.

    But, sadly, not all artists are so lucky, and the current political climate in the US isn't so forgiving. Back in 1997, NEA funding [house.gov] was severely cut, and private giving hasn't increased to make up for the deficit. And with current debates about eliminating the estate tax failing to see how the estate tax actually increases patronage of museums and public art institutions by wealthy people eager to divest themselves of inheritted works, we're little assured of a brighter future.

    How many other lego scuplters would our nation produce if we were more liberal with funding for the arts? How many nascent artists, how many little Erics, are picking through their lego tubs, searching for that flat 3x1 piece, but more importantly, searching for a nation who would see their promise and help them deliver? And if they ever receive the funding they so desperately need, will they be saddled with draconian political restrictions on what sort of art they may create? Sure, no one's offended by a lego Mona Lisa, but will the same be true when someone finally builds a lego Piss Christ?

    I urge all of you, write your congresspersons and support funding for the arts. Especially our international friends over in the Netherlands, since you seem to have something extra to do with legos and all. It's imperative that the promise of tomorrow doesn't get squashed today like so many little pieces of plastic under the foot of an angry parent walk barefoot to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

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