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Threads like this is why I read /. (which, a friend of mine once noted, can be seen as a rather phallic symbol).

http://everything2.org/?node=penises+have+higher+bandwidth+than+cable+modems

http://everything2.org/title/Penises%2520have%2520higher%2520bandwidth%2520than%2520cable%2520modems

Time wasters?

How about slashdot's sister site, everything2?

Thanks to entropy, there can't be any immortality without a new universe. I believe there's a short story about it called "The Final Question"

Of course, I sincerely doubt that science can or will ever create God. Especially because the story makes explicit the point that the computer operates in spite of the heat death of the universe, which is physically impossible.

uhh... yeah... that was a joke, son.

"I wouldn't be so quick with the notion that cosmology and religion are incompatible, or that religion and science in general are incompatible."

They're not, unless you ask the "Evolution is just a theory" southern evangelicals. Hence the comment about Mississippi not believing in space.

and to leave on a more positive, funny note (unfortunately the original was removed by socially retarded humourless E2 admins ): The "Moon": A Ridiculous Liberal Myth

Or... the geeks that want to have articles for every minor character in their favourite TV shows could go to Everything2.org, where they own their articles and there is no policy on relevancy or bias, and leave Wikipedia alone, if they feel unwanted by "the regulars" there.

I'm sure that most people here know the site, and that most of the people that want to know about the backstory of every Warcraft characther would have no problem going there to get their fix of trivia instead of going to Wikipedia.

If you sign ANYTHING without reading it in it's entirety and modifying the thing you do not agree to, you really are a silly fool.

I click 'I agree' ON TOSes without worrying about what they say.

Citation and references would also offer a dizzying world of possibilities for moderating, ranking and following up on research. It would be trivial to automatically add to each article a list of articles that link back to it. Just think what Google or any search engine would do with such an open database (I know Google Scholar, but right now, it mostly indexes abstracts and cannot follow much in terms of references and citations).

I for one know I would read and write much more articles in such a system, and be much more active in general in my scientific community. Performing bibliography work when you can access on the spot every reference is so fast and effective, it's just a pity that right now, it litterally bleeds off by University's library.

And bias can be more subtle than a cable-newsian "Some say..." cheat. And some articles, such as for artists and musicians, would be just about worthless is they stuck to some platonic ideal of objectivity, where every work is equal to every other.

But the managment is well aware and making an effort. But it's an inherent weakness of information by the people, instead of by professionals -- Britannica was the Swiss in the global infomation war.

And, for the record, I'm a Wikipedia junkie, and fucking love it, faults included*. I can link-surf [or whatever you'd call reading an article, tabbing out every link that catches your eye as you go (growing exponentially); I'm having a bit of a brain fart on that] for days on end. For example, two weekends ago, I link-surfed to read every article I could find on the first and second world wars. I estimate that, in my stupor, I got through about 350 articles, for 3 to 4 Silmarillions' worth of raw text (and probably retained 0.01% of it).

Shit, I once, drunk, silly and reckless, tried to vandalize a page with a little personal (and unbelievably racist and offensive) jab against a friend, and quickly save and revert, as a dumb little joke. Even shitfaced, though, I remained a prudent little nerd and hit preview to review my handiwork, first. Five seconds later, I hit submit, and there to greet me was a message from an admin telling me, effectively, to fuck off. It was impressive -- it was the middle of the night, in most of the English-speaking world, an unposted preview was intercepted in seconds -- and sort of scary.

*For Reference with bias and faults explicitly, I mourn the effective demise of E2 -- I spent a good part of my earlier adolescece mindlessly link-surfing it, and I'd call its collected angst a major influence on my development. Large parts of it were sort of like a collective blog sorted by subject. And, aside from that, its much more entertaining than Wikipedia. And, sometimes, learning can benefit from some bias.

If you read the rest of that bloggers post (another slashdot member posted it above) you'll really see my point. Argument is good, but uncontrolled and uncensored anger will never be taken seriously in politics.

The giant flame posted above? Markos didn't write that. Rather, it was a slightly altered copy of the flame to end all flames which the writer helpfully included an oh-so-obvious link to down at the very bottom of the mass of text.

Get with the fucking program, will ya? Fucktard.

It is universally agreed under Anglic law that the job of the jury is to return a verdict according to the factual evidence in the particular case before them. It is a matter of contention as to whether and to what extent the law itself should be judged by a jury. Most judges and lawyers consider outright nullification an irremediable error, and hold the view that it is the function of the judge to decide the questions of law, and the jury to only decide the questions of fact. Proponents of the right of jury nullification disagree, with considerable US historical precedent. Both sides feel that any flaws of the current arrangement are less than those of any proposed alternative to correct them.

Myself, I believe it is a right akin to that of the right to take arms against the government for purpose of establishing a new one: not justicable when sucessful, but the exercise of this right indicates a major problem in society (one way or another), and should be done neither lightly nor casually. That said, the prosecutor would have his work cut out extracting a "guilty" verdict out of me given the surrounding circumstances of this case, and the DA would also have no hope of extracting my vote for his re-election.

Those interested in the topic should read the oddly named Sparf v. US in its entirety. (No, it's not the trial of a Thundercat.)

I had the 'forehead sense' quite strong as a younger kid, and it's diminished since. These days I usually get the same feeling during meditation, or intensely focused work (aka 'deep hack mode' :)

What you describe won't work. Your satellite would orbit Earth once a day, backwards.

What you are looking for is to position your satellite at the Earth-Sun Lagrange point (hard-core space geeks will gripe that it should be orbiting L1, but let's keep it simple). That's much further away than geo-sync, so you won't get very good views of specific targets on Earth.

However you'll get one heck of a good view of the whole Earth. That's what Triana was suposed to do. A webcam for our planet, streaming live 24h/day. Unfortunately Triana was Al Gore's pet project. The spacecraft was designed, built and tested when the Democrats were in power. Then George Bush 'won' the election. Out of spite, Triana was ordered removed from the launch schedule. Due to politics, it is quietly rusting in a storage container.

BTW, the launch which Triana was scheduled to ride was STS 107, Columbia's final flight.

Ah, no, no it shouldn't.

Besides, 23 is such an important number for conspiracy geeks that it's an instant hit :D

What I am annoyed about (it's always something, innit?) is that there are NO Bluetooth trackballs! Hello Logitech!

Though it doesn't appear to be Bluetooth specifically, Kensington does offer a wireless version of their Expert Mouse.

Kensington has always produced trackballs that are the size of a billiards ball. I've tried the ones where the balls are the size of a large gumball (about 1" across) and I've never thought they moved easily. The large Kensington balls have always worked very well for me, and combined with a wrist rest and ergonomic keyboard, I've pretty much eliminated most of my "computer related pains".

If you haven't worked with trackballs yet, consider this: when you use a mouse, where is your movement? Most likely, you're resting on your wrist (probably the ball opposite your thumb) and stretching/retracting/twisting off of that pivot point- not a natural movement. With a trackball, the movement is in your fingers. Specifically with the ones like Kensington makes, its your index/middle/ring fingers doing the movement. This kind of movement is at least a little more natural.

I don't work for Kensington or any computer product company; I just like to share my findings with people because people who use computers all day for work don't need to destroy their eyesight or hand/wrist joints.

Nicely put. You'd probably like Philip K. Dick's short story, "The Pre-Persons", if you haven't already read it.

Macka and others who frame abortion as the simple, obvious right of the woman involved are presupposing that the fetus has no rights of its own, which should be a (if not the) central question in the debate over abortion. (Also, those who take the "her body, her life" position should, to be consistent, support legalized prostitution. I don't know how many of them do.)

Unless, of course, you claim that "a fetus is not a human being" and has the same rights as, say, a fly.

I don't see why humanness, for ethical purposes, should be a discontinuous, either-or variable. Clearly it is unreasonable to say that a 38-week fetus has the rights of a fly, while a newborn baby has the same rights as you, me, and Abe Vigoda, but it doesn't make much more sense to extend those same rights all the way back to the mindless, microscopic fertilized egg. I would say that factors like the ability to feel pain, to fear death, and to enjoy life are more relevant than any arbitrary, excluded-middle definition of humanity.

Personally I'd say that late-term abortion is sometimes wrong, and infanticide is sometimes right. Location (in or out of the womb) is not in itself a factor with ethical relevance.

Anyway, I'd guess there's quite a bit I disagree with you about, but you're dead on about the lack of rational debate, at least.

I remember hearing that a lot of Everquest was based on research done at a Diku MUD called Sojourn. I always thought that if you only looked at the text scroll of either Everquest or WoW, you could say the gameplay was the same.

I have the same problem with the layout here in Finland. When I lived in Britain a few years ago, I got used to the UK layout which is almost the same as the US version, and I still use it for most of my typing.

Okay, every Wikipedian on /. is going to reply to this one (and it's definitely +5, Interesting, which is why it needs a good response), so lemme give it a shot:

1. Moderation is tricky like hell. Slashdot has one of the best moderating systems out there, and you see how many mods-on-crack you still see. It might still work out, and it might be a good idea to try it out. Atleast part of the appeal of Wikipedia (atleast for me) is that I can go into the present article on, say, QBASIC, delete every single word that's been written on the subject, and start over. Of course, if my new version sucks, somebody will revert it back to their version. If its better, it stays. That kind of flexibility comes at a cost, and it's something we at Wikipedia patrol vigorously. But I think that is extremely cool. There have been attempts made to create a moderated encyclopedia. I think that would just take the fun out of Wikipedia very quickly.

2. Business has always been a tricky issue at Wikipedia - pretty famously, the Spanish Wikipedia forked into the Encyclopedia Libre because of worries that advertising might go up on Wikipedia. Even now, a lot of people are worried about whether advertising would affect the way we work. Right now, the status quo seems to be raising money for equipment from donation drives and merchandising.

3. It's been done.

Like elm. Or Zmail. Or carrier pigeons. Or anything other than Lotus Notes. Nothing ruins your day like the red box of death!

As you rightly point out, the speed depends on the frame of reference (i.e. the speed is always relative to the position of the observer).

However, adding the velocities the way you did is only possible with slow-moving objects (slow in comparison with the speed of light, that is). When dealing with fast objects, the Lorentz transformations creep in.

That means, for example, that shooting a cannonball at the speed 0.75 c from a spaceship that is moving at the speed 0.5 c in the same direction, you would get a cannonball travelling at some 0.8 c (my guesstimate, I'm too lazy to calculate it), rather than at 1.25 c. At low speeds, these differences are negligible and Galilean ("normal") transformations apply.

As for your other comment, when you really think about it ;-), speed does exist - not as an absolute number, but as a speed relative to something. Yes, it is often said "the speed is 65 mph," but this is mostly a shorthand for saying "65 mph relative to the Earth." Two cars travelling against each other, each at a speed of 65 mph relative to the Earth, travel at a speed of 130 mph relative to each other. Both of the speeds do objectively exist, but it takes two to play the game - the object and the reference frame:-).
(Feel free to correct me, IANAP)

In any communication channel, the data rate (as measured in bits per second) is proportional to bandwidth, and it kind of makes sense to confuse the two (it was originally a hacker joke). The problem is that they are really separate things. For example, plain old telephone has a bandwidth of a few kHz, but the data rate can be more than a few kbps if there is good signal to noise ratio. To be precise:

Data rate in bps = log2 (1+S/N) * Bandwidth in Hz
(Shannon's Law)

d00d, saige is a ch1x0r. :)

I have the license plate to prove it.

Of course. Aging is the process of the body breaking down, and if they cure aging, it's going to mean that your body stays in it's prime for a not longer. It doesn't mean we're going to spend 1000 years getting more and more frail - because people COULDN'T live 1000 years doing so, the body would fall apart completely before then.

I don't see why everyone assumes that extending lifespans by huge amounts would result in extending just the tail end over that time. Damn Tithonus Syndrome.

If photoblogs are quickly becoming the next cool thing in the blog world, will my electric monk need more memory or will I have to look at the pictures myself?

Definately check these guys out. I have seen them live twice and they are amazing. Most recently, they opened for Dave Matthews Band on the Vote for Change Tour. I did a write up on everything2.org about them awhile ago, check it out http://www.everything2.org/index.pl?node_id=139588 3&lastnode_id=124/

Read more about it here.

As far as I know, the "waste" from nuclear power generation is the radioactive material. The water just needs to be cooled (hence those huge steaming towers that you see on the Simpsons).

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it does." ;)

Bandwidth does not mean data-transfer rate, no matter what the marketroids say. They are different quantities measuring different things in different units. Even though they are related in some cases.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth

http://everything2.org/index.pl?node_id=871448

http://everything2.org/index.pl?node_id=996851

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it does." ;)

Bandwidth does not mean data-transfer rate, no matter what the marketroids say. They are different quantities measuring different things in different units. Even though they are related in some cases.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth

http://everything2.org/index.pl?node_id=871448

http://everything2.org/index.pl?node_id=996851

I have no idea whether the effect would be so big though.

Some (Majorana?) even thought some kinds of matter were radiating "pushing gravity", but I'm really leaning dangerously far out of the window by guessing that this is the way that a black hole a the center of the galaxy causes the anomaly in galactic rotation curve that is observed (that anomaly suggests more (gravitational) pull, too.)

Please note that the arguments derived from thinking about Pushing gravity might apply even if gravity is not considered pushing by the physics used.

What to do with tons of left-over bananas? Simple, take the peels, extract the bananadine, and smoke it!

Wait, you say that musa sapientum bananadine isn't real? That it was brought about by a combination of too many drugs and an over-active imagination? But it has to be true, I read it on the Internet!

http://everything2.org/?node=gabber

I agree so many of those have become meaningless - or even obnoxious?

But how about ch1x0r?

It's been said before don't be a sharecropper.

If you must work on proprietary OSes then don't do something that extends the Operating System itself. Widgets are a classic example. If you read Konfabulator's post about it - they do not seem totally surprised.

Software development is a Red Queen Race - you've got to stay ahead of the competition by being better faster cooler. The race that Apple is running is not against its developers but Windows. All power to them. Sure it would be nice for them to buy up innovative products like they (supposedly) did with the original multi-finder.

Not sure why they don't. It seems obvious that Windows developers half hope that MS would buy them out. But it could be argued that this would open Apple up to problems of intellectual property challenges that they couldn't afford to pay for. If you've another idea way they don't play more fair then post here.

But they do buy out good software products. Some of the Pro software has been bought from other developers.

But if you develop software too close to Apple's core business then I guess you have to look at that Sharecropper paradigm again and avoid it.

So lookout if you work on the following plots of ground...

Search (Watson)
Music (Audion)
Networking (Dave)
Desk Accessories / OS extensions (Konfabulator)
Browsers / Internet Content & Search (Camino, NewsNetWire)
Video editing

I think you'd be foolish to develop a PVR for Mac OS X for instance - that covers several of the above fields... basically a Video iTunes with search and networking - perhaps that RSS stuff as well. Expect Apple to run with this for sure - that new codec H.264 should run pretty well over AirPort Express... and wait until wireless UWB Firewire hits silicon.

Still - shame on Apple - seems like they could do better. They even had the gall to present this stuff at the WWDC - where the developers would surely know where they were getting the inspiration from.... amongst the ranks of those in the audience. Hell the Konfabulator guys, Arlo Rose & Perry Clarke, were probably in the audience!

It's been said before don't be a sharecropper.

If you must work on proprietary OSes then don't do something that extends the Operating System itself. Widgets are a classic example. If you read Konfabulator's post about it - they do not seem totally surprised.

Software development is a Red Queen Race - you've got to stay ahead of the competition by being better faster cooler. The race that Apple is running is not against its developers but Windows. All power to them. Sure it would be nice for them to buy up innovative products like they (supposedly) did with the original multi-finder.

Not sure why they don't. It seems obvious that Windows developers half hope that MS would buy them out. But it could be argued that this would open Apple up to problems of intellectual property challenges that they couldn't afford to pay for. If you've another idea way they don't play more fair then post here.

But they do buy out good software products. Some of the Pro software has been bought from other developers.

But if you develop software too close to Apple's core business then I guess you have to look at that Sharecropper paradigm again and avoid it.

So lookout if you work on the following plots of ground...

Search (Watson)
Music (Audion)
Networking (Dave)
Desk Accessories / OS extensions (Konfabulator)
Browsers / Internet Content & Search (Camino, NewsNetWire)
Video editing

I think you'd be foolish to develop a PVR for Mac OS X for instance - that covers several of the above fields... basically a Video iTunes with search and networking - perhaps that RSS stuff as well. Expect Apple to run with this for sure - that new codec H.264 should run pretty well over AirPort Express... and wait until wireless UWB Firewire hits silicon.

Still - shame on Apple - seems like they could do better. They even had the gall to present this stuff at the WWDC - where the developers would surely know where they were getting the inspiration from.... amongst the ranks of those in the audience. Hell the Konfabulator guys, Arlo Rose & Perry Clarke, were probably in the audience!

Argumentum ad Hominem (Latin)

Refers to a fallacy of logic in argument, specifically one of the Fallacies of Relevance. When a debater cannot prove a point, he/she attempts to attack the opponent instead of his/her position.

Example: "You shouldn't listen to anything foo says, he's an ethnic!"

Compare ad bacculum, ad ignorantiam, ad misericordiam, ad populum, ad vericundiam.

Ad hom"i*nem (#). [L., to the man.]

` phrase applied to an appeal or argument addressed to the principles, interests, or passions of a man.

Not that it worked out very well, but I still think the American's bombing method was much more interesting, and probably a little less well-known. (Though not at all arcane. The last time I mentioned it at least one fourteen-year-old already knew of it.)

This isn't the first time Nintendo has used the over-under screen combination for a portable game. In fact, the first time this layout was used was in 1982 in one of the old Game & Watch games. Amusingly, a version of Zelda was even released in this configuration.

Also worth mentioning is the fact that a multi-screen G&W was also the first Nintendo system to debut the d-pad, the little cross-shaped directional control that replaces an un-thumbable joystick. More than 20 years later it has been copied by everybody and is still used on every console you can buy at SuperTarget.

Who is this 'Adolph Hitler'? He wouldn't happen to be any relation to Adolf Hitler, would he?

Sounds like a sosialist dolphin :o

my point is that if i dont install the gui for gnu/linux, i still can have gnu/linux. such a thing is not possible with windows.

there is not an arbitrary difference between bundling the browser and integrating it permanently into the OS.

dont believe me that IE is the window manager? open up my computer(or any folder) and type http://slashdot.org into the address bar.

In its original form: How to install Linux on a dead badger.

I assume you have never tried Everything. While not as educating as an encyclopedia, an average visit to that site leaves my Opera with 50+ open pages that caught my eye from the softlinks.

And most encyclopedia sites should have some "random entry" or "article of the day" features that are almost as good as randomly flipping pages.

There are simpler methods to ensure that a long string of 0's doesn't occur, without 40% redundancy.

The real reason for the encoding is FEC or Forward Error Correction. It ensures that if you lose a bit here and there, there is enough redundant information spread around the damaged part to reconstruct the original data stream.

everything2 is also excellent and offers some great insight and even advice.

Obviously a gateway drug leading up to a Fabrege egg habit.

Why, the Law of Fives of course fnord.

You probably need to learn more about The Illuminatus! Trilogy and the 23 enigma fnord.

The truth is that to the best of our knowledge, sanctions worked. Iraq was not developing nukes. What makes you think that sanctions would not be so effective for other Arab states? What makes you think that the conquest of Iraq would have any significant effect other other countries? What makes you think that an Arab government would give a nuke to Bin Laden for him to drop it onto the US?

Personally I think that nuclear weapons currently owned by Russian and the USA (thousands of ICBMs active and ready to be launched at a minutes notice) are many times more dangerous than the potential of certain "rogue" states to develop single small and inefficient nukes. I suggest you read about Stanislav Petrov and the incident he helped to prevent. Then it might be worth it to rethink your priorities.

International terrorism (a loaded and incorrect term, but unfortunately, it was forced on us by Bush) is a minor risk. We all know extremely well that media overrepresents dangerous incidents. You can have murder rate decrease in your country 3 times, yet the coverage would increase 7 times! (that happened in the US in the past years) Same with terrorism. You are more likely to be killed by bees, eaten by a shark, striked by a lightning, etc., etc. then to be killed by a terrorist. Yet we pretend that this is somehow the biggest problem we have. Add to that the obvious dangers of mortality - we still haven't defeated cancer, cardio-vascular deseases, etc. - and you should realise that medical research is vastly more important then starting pointless wars.