baked.net · Domains · Slashdot Mirror

Re:wow... by TheDude[40oz] · 2000-07-19 04:55 · Score: 2 · on Larry Wall Announces Perl 6

A complete rewrite? This, from the man who advocates laziness in programmers? :)

Yeah - he's lazy enough to have the public do most of the work as far as figuring out what to keep, get rid of, modify, etc. He's letting us do the harder work of figuring out what to change, while in his laziness, he and other developers will actually only do the implementation. Seems like a perfect lazy-man's plan to me :)

--
TheDude
Smokedot
Drug Info, Rights, Laws, and Discussion

Re:Community's perl? by TheDude[40oz] · 2000-07-19 04:42 · Score: 1 · on Larry Wall Announces Perl 6

You make it sound like everyone cannot go to the perl mailing lists now ... they can.

Well, that's not what I meant, but yeah, it does sound like that's what I was saying. I just think it could work out great having perl users and developers worldwide involved in creating perl 6. I'm sure there'll be problems with things someone wants integrated, but most don't, but overall, I think this could work out really well for perl.

--
TheDude
Smokedot
Drug Info, Rights, Laws, and Discussion

Community's perl? by TheDude[40oz] · 2000-07-19 03:13 · Score: 1 · on Larry Wall Announces Perl 6

"[the] community's rewrite of perl, and the community's rewrite of the community."

This should be interesting. I assume this means everyone will be able to go to the perl mailing lists & suggest things to change for perl 6? That'd be useful, and I'd assume many people will do this. If it actually goes down this way, I wonder how different perl will be in version 6. Will perl change to accomodate people who like python, or c, or will it just be perl with new p- & c-like features, or just a very different perl? Any way it comes out, I have a feeling it will be a better perl because of Wall's attempt to get the community to make perl better.

--
TheDude
Smokedot
Drug Info, Rights, Laws, and Discussion

If you're looney enough to run a file of unknown o by TheDude[40oz] · 2000-06-15 07:21 · Score: 1 · on SightSound To Distribute Films Via Gnutella

If you're looney enough to run a file of unknown origin with a .vbs extension, that would be referred to as Darwinism."

So, anyone out there wanna create the "killer virus" of the Evil Empire? Darwinism got a little forgotten recently - maybe we need a refresher course?

--
TheDude
Smokedot
Drug Info, Rights, Laws, and Discussion

Why? by spiralx · 2000-06-11 17:37 · Score: 2 · on NASA's E-Nose: It Smells, But It's Improving

I'm curious at to why you believe that that would be a good thing. Do you approve of the rediculous efforts spent on the whole "War on Drugs" and the significant blows to individual liberty that it has bought with it? Having electronic drug sniffers on every street corner, whilst maybe effective, sounds like as big an invasion of privacy as any I can imagine.

Now, I may be a bit biased here, enjoying drugs on a recreational level here myself, but even apart from that I've still yet to hear a single good reason why drugs in general are such a menace to society that they must be demonised and their users treated as the worst kind of criminal.

There's an article here at SmokeDot about how and why marijuana became illegal, and I think it illustrates some of the petty reasons they became illegal in the first place, even though now those reasons have been buried.

Re:Specific example. by TheDude[40oz] · 2000-06-11 12:08 · Score: 1 · on WIPO Settles 'Cybersquatting' Disputes

UN Security Council

YEAH! That'd be the term...

--
TheDude
Smokedot
Drug Info, Rights, Laws, and Discussion

Re:Specific example. by TheDude[40oz] · 2000-06-11 10:36 · Score: 1 · on WIPO Settles 'Cybersquatting' Disputes

Well, I agree that we need some world organization to settle domain disputes between countries. Still, I'm not sure that WIPO would be the best org to do this. The way I see the UN is basically as a tool of the main large nations in the UN (USA, Russia, UK, China? - there's a word for them, but it escapes me). Sure, the UN is supposed to be a league of nations supporting the common good of the world, but what is the UN in actuality? If Coca-Cola wants to own www.coke.pk (or whatever Pakistan's country code is), but someone in Pakistan owns that site and it's dedicated to cocaine, what would the WIPO do? Most likely give it to Coke, regardless of whether the Pakistani site is cybersquatting or not.

If someone's cybersquatting and a company wants the domain for legitimate reasons, and the WIPO rules in favor of the company, that's fine. However, I can't see the WIPO ruling in favor of someone in some petty (in UN terms) nation instead of some corporation in a powerful (UN terms) nation - regardless of who's got legitimate reasons to control the domain.

Besides, how could WIPO deal with all the stupid lawsuits coming out? There's been way too many recently - can one organization really take the time to study each case and rule correctly in at least a majority of cases??

--
TheDude
Smokedot
Drug Info, Rights, Laws, and Discussion

Re:Gotta point this out... by Dr.+Sp0ng · 2000-06-11 05:20 · Score: 2 · on Giant Linux Boost From Washington Post

You make some damn good points. I upgraded from NT4 to Win2k about a week ago, and was PISSED when it hosed my LILO installation and I could no longer boot into Linux (the Release Candidates of Win2k didn't do this, so I wasn't expecting it to.)

Anyway, I decided I'd play around with Win2k for a bit and then get LILO working again and go back to Linux for real work. I haven't yet though - no need to. Win2k does everything I need for a desktop (besides development, but I do that mostly on my Alpha anyway.) I use 3D Studio MAX, Bryce 4, Photoshop (although I like Gimp better), Illustrator (Linux's Illustrator-wannabees are terrible - ever try KIllustrator? Ugh), Poser, Painter 6, Internet Explorer 5, Microsoft Word (occasionally... I prefer vi with LaTeX or DocBook though :-), and Microsoft Access (for work only... stupid secretaries and stuff need access to the main campus Oracle database and I'm the one who has to create the Access/VBS interface... argh, I hate VB). Until there are versions of these for Linux (at the very least, 3D Studio MAX, Bryce, Painter, and either IE or a finished Mozilla) I'm going to have to use Win2k as my main desktop.

Until I upgraded from NT4 to Win2k, working in Windows was painful and I did it as infrequently as possible, but Win2k is very pleasant to work with, and relatively stable too.

Don't get me wrong - I love Linux, and I use it for all my server tasks (all my data is stored on my Alpha running Samba, I can't risk letting Win2k fuck it up. Windows is only for running Apps, IMHO, storing important data under Windows is a mistake), and my email and web server is running on the Alpha as well, but Win2k definately stomps Linux in the desktop area. Even for me, a hardcore Unix user.
--

Re:What Happened? by TheDude[40oz] · 2000-05-18 13:39 · Score: 1 · on Metallica Remains Silent

I never said they "sold out". I understand times are changing, and "different" does not equal "sucks". Just to add something else, I'm definitely not a metal-head. My point was this:

Once Metallica and Dre got too caught up in how much money they were making, they forgot how to produce art. Metallica's music change was part of them growing older, and tastes changing. That's fine. What is not fine is that they started caring more about money than about art. The beginning of this (as I am guessing) was when they put out Load, with a completely different style than anything that came before it. I must admit, I hated Load. Reload was no better. But I believe Metallica changed their style more for popularity's sake than due to their own change of musical taste. If I'm wrong, so be it, but that's my opinion until it gets struck down.

Regardless of what they've done in the past, this new attack on Napster users goes far beyond trying to save their copyrights on their music. Yeah, they should be able to copyright their own musical ideas and tunes (though in a better society, they wouldn't need to), and yeah, others making money off Metallica's and Dre's music is wrong. (Speaking of this, how exactly was Napster making money????) Though why punish the fans/Napster users? If Metallica/Dre were going to go after someone, they should have made it Napster, not fans. Metallica's move to ban 330,000 fans from Napster goes far beyond making sure Metallica gets their due payment. This is where Metallica and Dre both went really wrong. It seems the bands care more about getting those few extra K than their fans - and seeing how many K they have been paid already, more $ just isn't worth that much.

--
TheDude
Smokedot
Drug Info, Rights, Laws, and Discussion

Re:You fought back! *but with the wrong letter!* by TheDude[40oz] · 2000-05-18 04:53 · Score: 1 · on Our Attorney's Response To Microsoft

Hahahahahahahahah! Now that would've shown MS a thing or two about licensing.... Although if /. would have done this, you know MS's next move would have been to make letter-wrap licenses for all of its publications. They don't need any help in thinking up more widget-wrap licenses.

--
TheDude
Smokedot
Drug Info, Rights, Laws, and Discussion

Re:What Happened? by TheDude[40oz] · 2000-05-18 02:40 · Score: 3 · on Metallica Remains Silent

Both Metallica and Dre were anti-almost-everything bands that put out some damn fine music. Then they got popular. They were still good until they got too rich for their own good. They stopped creating art and started creating shit to sell for profit. Once they became profit-oriented instead of art-oriented, they started going downhill, and eventually ended up as what we see today: two formerly damn fine bands afraid of being forgotten and losing their huge piles of money.

--
TheDude
Smokedot
Drug Info, Rights, Laws, and Discussion

Re:1 Gig on web servers? by Dr.+Sp0ng · 2000-05-17 22:25 · Score: 3 · on Introducing The New Slashdot Setup

Do you really need 1 Gig of ram on the web servers? Wouldn't the extra memory be better used on the DB server? You're probably not using more than 150MB for the httpd's.

Not true at all. I'm running a slash server which doesn't get very many hits (~3000 in the last two days, chump change compared to Slashdot) and right now httpd is using 270MB of RAM.
--

They actually expect by TheDude[40oz] · 2000-05-16 16:06 · Score: 1 · on Act Like A Real Star Trek Captain: Talk

voice-recognition software to be that good by the time they release? Granted, I'm no expert on voice-recognition, and don't really know how far along it is, but I can't imagine that it will be ready for something like this. It's a great idea, and hopefully someday we'll be able to do most of our tasks at the computer by telling it what to do, but I don't think that this game will be all that great at listening to you and following your orders. Hell, we can't do that ourselves, yet we expect to make machines that do it well?

--
TheDude
Smokedot
Drug Info, Rights, Laws, and Discussion