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The Floppy Awards 72

Posted by Hemos from the something-to-warm-the-belly dept.
c_g12 wrote to us with the third annual Floppy Awards. It's a pretty humourous collection of some of the (mis)haps of the past year or so -- something to amuse yourself with going into the holiday weekend.
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The Floppy Awards More

The Floppy Awards

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  • And PC Magazine == Playboy for geeks?

  • Floppy Awards: (Score:5)

    by zephc ( 225327 ) on Thursday December 21, 2000 @03:08PM (#544283)
    ... because installing Windows 2000 Professional on 974 floppy disks is FUN!

    ------
    http://vinnland.2y.net/
  • It wasn't Jon that created the code, anyway. He was a member of MoRE (Masters of Reverse Engineering), and one of the other members was the one who actually wrote it.

    Typical media story twisting made him out to be the author. Why? Because he was the one who got all the publicity. HE got questioned. HE got brought down to the police station. HE got his equipment seized. So, he must have been the one who did it....right?

    Bzzzt. That only shows the ignorance of the modern media. The other members of MoRE are keeping low, and anonymous. Smart.

    LinuxWorld: OK. Because I've seen conflicting media reports on that, and other things. Like, some say that you are 15, others say you are 16.

    Jon Johansen: I'm 16 now, I was 15 when it happened ... and the encryption code wasn't in fact written by me, but written by the German member. There seems to be a bit of confusion about that part.

    Sheesh. Innocent until proven guilty? Not on this planet. Accurate media coverage? Wake me when it happens.

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • yeah, but he's subject to a *bundle* of lawsuits from investors who got creamed from his stunt.
  • I really hate it because as a cable modem user, the bottlenecks come from moving from page to page- not loading a page (it's usually those Q#$%#$ adservers' fault). However, the reason they do this, I believe, is because of said ads... the more views they get, the more money they get.

    For Windows:
    Add the following line to \windows\hosts --
    adserver.example.com 127.0.0.1

    For Linux: (replace iptables with ipchains if that's what you use)
    iptables -a OUTPUT -j REJECT -p tcp -d adserver.example.com
    Been a while since I've messed with iptables/ipchains, but I think that's the right syntax (or close to it).

    Or just download Junkbuster. [junkbuster.com]

    ---
    "Fdisk format reinstall, doo dah doo dah,
  • For those that don't know: A geek trying to prove the resourcefulness of the Web by holing himself up in his house for an entire YEAR! How ridiculous is that?

    Salon has a good but lenghty article [salonmag.com] about the guy's lunacy

  • C'mon now! they had a perfectly legitimate claim...





    ...FOR ME TO POOP ON!
  • rev engineering IS legal.. it's just not legal in the US.

    //rdj

  • Funnier than ZDnet (Score:3)

    by heinzkeinz ( 18262 ) on Thursday December 21, 2000 @06:10PM (#544290) Homepage
    Here's a similarly themed, but funnier, article from Satirewire.com [satirewire.com].

    Fewer ads, as well.

    While you are there, check out their George W. Bush weblog [satirewire.com]--it's really witty.
  • Wired == Vogue for geeks.
    Business 2.0 is for folks who used used to read wired and have since gotten jobs. I nowadays I read wired and I think to myself "I just don't care."
    Of course you can't read Wired or Business 2.0 because it's more ads than actual content. That's why Business 2.0 went bimonthly, you can spread more ads out over more issues, and noone notices.

  • Re:Not really... (Score:3)

    by Richy_T ( 111409 ) on Thursday December 21, 2000 @06:15PM (#544292) Homepage
    Not to disagree with the thrust of your argument but do try not to fall into the trap of illegal==wrong. Sometimes it just aint so.

    Rich

    The little man who rejected your form because you filled out a box wrong is in the heart of every cop who wrote out a speeding ticket.

  • Aren't the adds just links ot other sites? So, their selling their souls to waste 1/2 of your bandwidth :)
  • I take that back - looks like they have their own ads server. my bad
  • ...way back in the day when I swapped floppies on my 128k ram macintosh for hours on end. I became the floppy swapping machine, and I had a killer one-hand technique.
  • ...allowing users to freely transfer the unencrypted video over the Internet.

    Well, they also didn't mention the practical limitations to transferring several GBs of data over the Internet...

  • Well, if it's a girl, you'd call her "Dotty."

    --
  • Agreed, the amount of pages is highly irritating, but you can do something about the ads. On my NT workstation at work I run Proxomitron [tripod.com] as a filtering proxy. I can even route it to the corporate firewall without much headache. At home I run CGIProxy [jmarshall.com] on my home web server to get around the corporate firewall when it blocks pages (until they block my home machine). If you're running linux (or WinX, for that matter), you can set up a Junkbuster [junkbuster.com] proxy that will perform pretty much the same function as Proxomitron.

  • Not really... (Score:4)

    by zeromusmog ( 260817 ) <[zeromusmog] [at] [gmail.com]> on Thursday December 21, 2000 @03:12PM (#544299) Homepage
    The last page serves to remind us that, no matter how much the RIAA is ripping us off, whether or not we have credit card, whether or not we plan on buying the CD later, no matter how rich the music companies are, etc. etc. etc., downloading copyrighted music is illegal.

    Now, don't get me wrong: I have an over 2 GB folder of MP3s myself... and a good portion of them I don't own the CDs to nor do I plan on buying them. But I don't try to justify it... it's wrong, but I do it anyway.
  • Computer Shopper == Guns and Ammo for geeks
  • On page 5 [zdnet.com] of the floppies, it reads:
    "In an effort to watch DVD movies on a computer running Linux, 15-year-old Norwegian Jon Johansen created and distributed a program called DeCSS that cracked DVD encryption, allowing users to freely transfer the unencrypted video over the Internet. He was questioned and released."

    He was questioned and released? That's it? What? They aren't reading the same press reports I'm reading.

  • Re:Somewhat offtopic... (Score:3)

    by MAXOMENOS ( 9802 ) <mike&mikesmithfororegon,com> on Thursday December 21, 2000 @03:14PM (#544302) Homepage
    Wired == Vogue for geeks.

    More like: Wired == People for geek wannabees.

    ObJectBridge [sourceforge.net] (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.

  • But I'm paying $5 a month for my music subscription on Napster! -- It's illegal to distribute intellectual property you don't own.

    But I have MP3's of Britney Spears making out with Justin -- It's illegal to distribute intellectual property you don't own.

    But The Offpring support Napster -- It's illegal to distribute intellectual property you don't own.
  • I have to second that motion...

    I really hate it because as a cable modem user, the bottlenecks come from moving from page to page- not loading a page (it's usually those Q#$%#$ adservers' fault). However, the reason they do this, I believe, is because of said ads... the more views they get, the more money they get.

    But yeah, here here. I'm tired of the insanely small 'mini-column' that frequents many news sites; usually the ones based on paper publications... I didn't buy a 19" monitor to only have a 1/5-width column be viewable. >_<
  • The weather and your health. :-D
  • Actually it is not exactly clear that non-commercial sharing of copyrighted works is legal or not. The concept of fair use and several updates to copyright law seem to grant this right, but the exact definition of fair use has always been left up to judges themselves rather than a firm definition in the lawbooks. Sorry, no citations offhand, if anyone has any backing me up or proving me wrong please post them.

  • Yeah, but unlike the Napster case, there are strong moral grounds to stand on, (such as, reverse engineering should be legal; you didn't steal anything if you didn't take anything in the first place; the list goes on) on this one. You may more may not agree with it, but they're there.

    So far, i haven't heard one compelling moral reason to use Napster to get music you haven't bought.

    -ben.c
  • Hmm... scary thought... if CD-ROM drives were never invented (or any other means of cheap mass storage) would we have multiple floppy drives again? Perhaps some sort of device to put all 715 Word 2000 disks in, so that they are funneled in and don't have to be switched?

    Hmm....

  • Why is This Bad? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The author claims that Balmer predicting a drop in tech stocks is a mishap. Why is this a mishap? It proves that Steve Balmer had the foresight to predict the drop in technology stocks. The drop was clearly not caused by him making that prediction, if that is what the author intended by including that. Besides, Microsoft is the greatest company in the world and Steve Balmer is the CEO. I think if a person is the CEO of the greatest company ever created, then he is probably smarter than most people. Especially the author of that article.
  • And I nominate the win$hit 98 crash on public TV.

  • So far, i haven't heard one compelling moral reason to use Napster to get music you haven't bought.

    How about using it to get music you can't buy - live bootlegs, unreleased stuff, stuff the label won't release (Smashing Pumpkins), indie stuff released by the band, etc...
  • the following is from the ninth page and was orignally a table:Rationalization Legal Argument Because of Napster I actually buy more music at the store. It's illegal to distribute intellectual property you don't own. It's so rampant, it must be legal It's illegal to distribute intellectual property you don't own. It's the record companies' fault for making CDs so hard to open. It's illegal to distribute intellectual property you don't own. That's what the record companies get for makng vinyl obsolete. It's illegal to distribute intellectual property you don't own. Metallica lets people tape their concerts

    i think the intent here is to show that no amount of rationalization makes the illegal legal, but for me it ends up doing the opposite. the long list of benefits vs a single reference that you cant because its illegal (not to be confused with 'you can't because it's wrong). thus, downloading from napster is illegal, morally justifiable, and by that definition, civil disobedience by a large portion of the population vs an anti-social law.

    on a side note, if guilds were protected by law and threatened by rampant mass production from factories, would we require that the factories keep the guilds in business through royalties? should the government subsidize the guilds? or maybe just outlaw factories for destroying the established market?

    if the RIAA companies can't compete with the newest mass production market, maybe it's time for them to liquidate their assets and find a new business?

  • >Not to disagree with the thrust of your argument but do try not to fall into the trap of illegal==wrong.

    Unless, of course, your moral compass indicates that illegal activity is wrong.

  • The article claims that a program "claiming to be a Gameboy emulator for PalmOS" is really a virus. This isn't true. The program (Liberty) in question is quite real, although shareware. The "virus" (really just a trojan) is a different program which claims to convert the shareware version to the registered version. Read about it here [up.ac.za]

  • Re:Not really... (Score:3)

    by Richy_T ( 111409 ) on Friday December 22, 2000 @09:14AM (#544315) Homepage
    Since the legality of things is determined by politicians who are humans, setting one's moral compass by it is about as valid as setting one's watch by blowing on dandelions.

    People who attempt set their moral compass in such a way are often vexed when laws come to pass which are contradictory to their true internal moral compass. Things like the banning of prayers at school sporting events and being charged with assault for defending yourself from robbery tend to upset these people.

    I'm not saying there is any 'one true morality' but those who model theirs after the laws have no imagination and are abdicating their responsibility of humans. Laws exist to reflect morality (albeit imperfectly) not vice versa.

    Rich

  • That is why one needed two floppy drives on the first Macs. One thing I absolutely hate about the current iterations of the MacOS is that it incessantly needs to know that the disk is still there somewhere.

  • OK, I'll do the math. $400,000 in 15 years? That's $26,667 a year on averge. Whoop-de-do. Not only that but he gets to room with Bubba and have a permanent mark on his... um.. record.

    No thanks.

  • "Floppy Awards?" I nominate the movie where Bill Gates is publicly displaying how great windows 98 is and it crashes. :)


  • I just hate the fact the pets.com cease and desist Late Night.

    --
    $ whoami
    nobody

  • Was the last page of Pro/Con Napster arguments a joke, or serious? It's hard to tell...

  • Slashdot Smith (Score:3)

    by c_g12 ( 262068 ) <c_g12NO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Thursday December 21, 2000 @02:40PM (#544322)
    I wonder how much Slashdot.org would pay me to name my kid "Slashdot." What do I call him for short? Slash?

  • floppy award nominee (Score:4)

    by cluge ( 114877 ) on Thursday December 21, 2000 @02:48PM (#544323) Homepage
    microsoft needs to get a floppy award for more than just their name. Their employees using outlook and exchange server manage to compromise their entire network. Official response "Oh no, our netowrk is secure, it's this one little hole the found, and we plugged it". Office 2002 code anyone?

  • Since the invention of Viagara that is. :P

  • Between this and f*ckedcompany.com is there anything other than good old family/friend mishaps we can use to get humor for the holiday weekend? Maybe the look on someone's face when they get one of my low-budget presents. :D
    .--bagel--.---------------.
    | aim: | bagel is back |
    | icq: | 158450 |
  • Ballmer's showing signs of an advanced "Greenspan complex."

    For the love of god please do not let Shrub appoint Ballmer as chair of the Federal Reserve Board!!

  • Somewhat offtopic... (Score:3)

    by pen ( 7191 ) on Thursday December 21, 2000 @02:52PM (#544327)
    I'd like to share a revelation...

    Wired == Vogue for geeks.

    --

  • Also, "allowing users to freely transfer the unencrypted video over the Internet" makes no mention of "allowing users of operating systems without software DVD support to make use of their DVD hardware and the movies they own."
  • You would have to call you kid 'Dot'. That doesn't sound as much like a serial killer.

    Come here 'Slash'... And put that knife down.
  • This is sad, not funny.
  • which would make best buy = strip club for geeks...

  • Re:Steve Ballmer (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    He can't.

    The Federal Reserve Board is not a U.S. Government entity. It's a private institution that nominates its own chairman. It is, of course, run by the Gnomes of Zurich... unless the Discordians have finally taken it over.

  • write, hah. port ie to linux... now the real question is, how many people will actually use a ms product on a linux box? Lets also not forget that most everyone using linux has the choice for a small fast browser on based on gecko or something similar... i see no possible way for ms to get IE on linux unless they gpl it and get it bundled with redhate or debian... but i would seriously doubt the debian peeps would include a ms product in their packages. atleast i hope not *grin*

  • You're not one of the Jonathans from the floppies, are you?

  • King announced that after the 6th installment (which should have been up on monday) he wasn't going to write any more chapters for a little while, but that he wasn't going to completely end it. there's no news as to when the hiatus should be over.

    on his site there's an interesting commentary by him about the experiment - i think ZDNet viewed it as a profit-making experience, when King didn't ;)

  • Some people seem to get very upset when someone says that the emperor has no clothes. I've scanned through the messages on some of the web based investment bulletin boards and found many examples where any criticism of a company, or their stock, generated vicious flames from other investors.

  • Re:The Ultimate Floppy (Score:3)

    by andi75 ( 84413 ) on Friday December 22, 2000 @02:10AM (#544337) Homepage
    > Who the hell breaks a 1000 word story up into 9 freaking pages!?!!!

    Just click on the 'print this page' link to get all on one page, without pesky banners or pictures.

    - Andreas

  • "aww, gcc on 10 floppy disks. you shouldnt have."
  • Hmmmm... I've been thinking of building a page-collating proxy app for these sites. It would work somewhat like DejaSearch (for which I created the web front end), in that it fetches all content from the site and presents it in a human readable form, without the marketing-mandated mess. It would be configurable through some database-like system which contains site-specific filters. In this case, it would just follow the 'next page' links, get the content, and put it in your browser. Think this might be useful? Then please comment... Oh, and I do not need rants about 'stealing content' and 'breaking the internet by blocking ads' and such. The Net was there before the suits, and (the interesting part of) it will survive after they are declared bankrupt.

    Cheers//Frank
  • Jonathan No. 3 In an effort to watch DVD movies on a computer running Linux, 15-year-old Norwegian Jon Johansen created and distributed a program called DeCSS that cracked DVD encryption, allowing users to freely transfer the unencrypted video over the Internet. He was questioned and released.

    Look at that...an opportunity to get some info out there and ZDNet can't even do better than "He was questioned and released"...like DeCSS is no big deal...

  • I read about the kid who pulled (well, kinda) the Emulex hoax [zdnet.com] (he lives in the same county as I, so it was all over the local news paper [ocregister.com]). Although the 15 years in prison doesnt sound too enticing, the fact that he got docked half a mil isnt as bad as it sounds: he pulled in over $900K from the prank. You do the math :)

    -----
    If Bill Gates had a nickel for every time Windows crashed...

  • Re:floppy award nominee (Score:3)

    by sacherjj ( 7595 ) on Thursday December 21, 2000 @02:57PM (#544342) Homepage

    Office 2002 code is worthless unless you have a subscription.


    "Would you like to save 'Document 1' before closing?"

    Click [Yes]

    "Please enter a valid credit card number to update you subscription to Office .NET. $9.95 for the first document, $0.99 for each additional document."

    Click [Cancel]

    "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

  • Then you're reading the wrong press reports; he was, in fact, questioned and released. Then, he was nominated for some prize by a [different] agency of his government.
    // mlc, user 16290
  • Perhaps you should read this [slashdot.org] article. And do a search for jon johansen while you are at it.
  • It's illegal to distribute intellectual property you don't own if the owner doesn't want you to.

    --

  • Right. He was indeed questioned, as the article you link to points out. I heard him speak a H2K [h2k.net] this summer, and he said that the government had dropped all criminal charges. I'm fairly confident that I would've heard about it if he'd been tried or convicted of anything.
    // mlc, user 16290
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Wow, a salient observation from ZDNet! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    A tale of two market movers. Mark Jakob, a 23-year-old living with his parents, issued a phony press release about Emulex Corp., briefly causing the stock to plummet to cover his short positions. He faces 15 years in prison and a $500,000 fine. Meanwhile, Henry Blodgett, an Internet analyst at Merrill Lynch, maintained a buy recommendation on Pets.com (whose shares were underwritten by Merrill Lynch) for months while its shares sank from $9 to $1, before finally downgrading his recommendations in August. He got off scot-free.

  • What about the eToys mess reported earlier [slashdot.org] by USA Today [usatoday.com].

    Goes right along with all the other "Dot-Com Desperation" reported in this article...just as sad! :P

  • The Ultimate Floppy (Score:5)

    by miracle69 ( 34841 ) on Thursday December 21, 2000 @03:02PM (#544350)
    Goes to Web Sites like ZD Net for selling their souls and 1/2 of their bandwidth and cpu cycles to advertisers.

    Who the hell breaks a 1000 word story up into 9 freaking pages!?!!!

    Gah.
  • "I wonder how much Slashdot.org would pay me to name my kid 'Slashdot.'"

    I'd rather name mine CowboyNeal or Hemos...if the price is right... :)

    --
  • Nothing there that's really that interesting anymore... it all seems like it happened long ago. I like the bits about people fleeing the now hated ".com" tag. Serves them right, the sheepheaded train jumpers.

    Napster, blah blah, Microsoft, blah blah, Britney, blah blah, dumb thieves/blackmailers. Is there nothing more to talk about?

  • What became of that book anyway? Last I heard, sales of the first chapter were way less than expected.

    Anyway, ZD could at least have explained why that venture deserved a Floppy Award.

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