This article claims that a lawsuit was filed over a Philly high school allegedly activating student's webcams to spy on students at home. Scary.

School Issued Laptops Used to Spy on Students at Home

This is a real question that I am curious about as an interested layman (I am not trying to be snarky or sarcastic).

It seems that all you really need to do for VOIP is encode and decode sound from a usb headset to/from mp3 or some such and send it to a peer. Can this not be done in under 2000 lines of python?

Granted, most end-users nowadays are behind a NAT, but is it really that expensive to set up a STUN server to traverse the NAT? I mean, would even this take more than a few thousand lines of python and relatively light traffic?

Also, if the move to IPv6 ever happens, will the need for NAT traversal pretty much disappear?

I am by no means an expert or even proficient at this sort of thing, so please let me know if I am missing something.

Decius wrote:

A federal jury on Thursday found Jammie Thomas-Rasset liable in the nation’s only Recording Industry Association of America file-sharing case to go to trial, dinging her $1.92 million for [sharing] 24 songs [on a p2p network].

We have mature, sophisticated political institutions in the United States of America that uphold justice and reach reasonable results.

We have credibility.

In fact, we set an example for the rest of the world. We are a shining light for freedom in which people of all nations find hope.

Our citizens are thankful that they live in a free country. They respect our legislators and judges - who have the most difficult task of maintaining and upholding our democratic values. These are intelligent people, our best and brightest, who faithfully represent the best interests of everyone in our country.

There are absolutely no widespread problems with our system's ability to cope with technological and social change. We are completely free of corruption and small minded authoritarianism. Our justice system meters out punishments that are righteous and appropriate, a fact which is ensured by our careful, deliberative processes in which checks and balances effectively contain the abuses of political power.

In sum, we are totally awesome, and there is absolutely no room for criticism of how we do things around here. Only evil people suggest that the fundamental structure of our institutions might need to be reconsidered. This is the end of history, and we represent the final form of political organization. There is no way that you could ever improve upon how we do things right now.

Man, what a great time to be alive!

It is worth noting that if she had shoplifted the equivalent number of CDs in Minnesota, it would be considered a misdemeanor offense and she would owe a maximum of $1000 dollars in fines.

If Sprint Communications corporation was required to pay equivalent fines for their 18.2 million dollars of illegal early termination fees, they would owe 1.024 trillion dollars, which would easily pay off the TARP.

The eighth amendment states:

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

I don't get it.

RE: The United States of America is a free country!

] LINDON, Utah, March 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The SCO
] Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCOXE - News) today issued the
] following information. The Company participated in a
] previously announced hearing with the Nasdaq Listing
] Qualifications Panel on March 17, 2005 regarding its
] possible delisting for its failure to file its Form 10-K
] for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2004 in a timely
] fashion as required under Marketplace Rule 4310(c)(14).
] The Company outlined for the Panel its plan for filing
] its delinquent Form 10-K. The Company also discussed its
] plan for filing the delinquent first quarter Form 10-Q
] with the Panel during the hearing. On March 18, 2005, the
] Company received a notice from the staff of The Nasdaq
] Stock Market regarding the Company's failure to comply
] with Nasdaq's requirement to file its Form 10-Q for the
] quarterly period ended January 31, 2005 in a timely
] fashion, as required under Marketplace Rule 4310(c)(14).

The NASDAQ is now reviewing SCO (current ticker: SCOXE) and may decide to delist them. I find it very interesting that SCO is continuing to not release their financial statements. They may be very close to their demise.

Their stock is currently down about 9% on the announcement.

SCO possibly very close to delisting

] Alton attorney Emert Wyss thought he could make money in
] a Madison County class action lawsuit, but he
] accidentally sued himself instead. Now he has four law
] firms after his money - and he hired all four.
]
]
] Wyss's boomerang litigation started in 2002, when he
] invited Carmelita McLaughlin to his office at 1600
] Washington St. in Alton. Acting as her attorney when she
] bought a home in Alton and when she refinanced it, on
] both occasions she had chosen Centerre Title--a company
] that Wyss owned--to close her loans.
]
]
] In the course of the attorney-client relationship, Wyss
] advised McLaughlin she might have a claim against
] Alliance Mortgage, holder of the first mortgage. Wyss
] believed Alliance Mortgage might have broken the law by
] charging a $60 fax fee when she refinanced.

This is rather bizarre.

Attorney accidentally sues himself

After decades of listening about Central Processing Units, years of listening about Graphic Processing Units and millimoments of listening about audio processing units, it is time to learn the new term. It's time to start talking about physics processing units (PPUs).

...

The answer is actually an add in card with either PCI Express or a PCI interface with up to 128MB of dedicated GDDR 3 memory that will take over all physics in the games. We saw some cool demos done in software on a laptop of what this card can do. It can operate with 32000 particles/rigid bodies or should I say bones? [You should, Fudo, you should. Ed.] When we talk about fluids, such cards can handle up to 50000 rigid bones. A CPU can do a couple hundred at the most.

...

We saw some cool demos where the company demonstrated "liquid fluids" with many "bones" and you can see the "lava" and "water" stimulations that look much better than ever before. It looks more real and much more alive.

Such cards can give some life to collision detection and can for example make a character go through grass and move every single grass while walking, adding a higher lever of realism into the scene than ever before. Looks cool I have to say. What need for grass?

We also saw some liquid simulations, where you could see blood spilled more realistically than ever before. It's especially good when you blow up a house into the smallest infinitesimal pieces, or bricks and mortar as the INQ calls them. It actually looks out of this world. I cannot imagine this in a war game. It will blow your minds.

Why go outside?

Age of physics processing units dawns

bucy wrote:
] ]
] ] Nasdaq noticed that SCO failed to timely file its 10K,
] ] and it has sent them a delisting notice. This is a notice
] ] of potential delisting, as SCO's press release urgently
] ] lets us know.
]
] Heh... SCOX got back out of the $3.50 range a few weeks ago
] and has
] been hovering around $4 for awhile...
]
] U: They've been delisted from NASDAQ!

I hate to rain on the parade, but unfortunately SCO has not been delisted. The ticker symbol SCOX has been changed to SCOXE to reflect the delinquent filing. If I understand correctly, SCO has thirty days to get the filing in and their symbol will return to SCOX.

The fifth letter definitions for the NASDAQ can be found here:

http://www.purepennies.com/fifth_letter.shtml

RE: Nasdaq may delist SCO

Check It! Free annual service now begins for the Western United States. The rest of us will have to wait a while.

Free Credit Reports For All!

Adventures of the playmobile hazmat team. The first one is the best one.

monochrom / Loka Daun / Spezialeinheit / Special Forces

] Americans do not believe that humans evolved, and the
] vast majority says that even if they evolved, God guided
] the process. Just 13 percent say that God was not
] involved. But most would not substitute the teaching of
] creationism for the teaching of evolution in public
] schools.

CBS News | Poll: Creationism Trumps Evolution | November 23, 2004 21:02:35